Optimisms

While driving through New Orleans on a recent visit, my friends and I passed this amazing wall that offered the line “Before I Die…” and blanks for the locals to fill in.

It turns out, the wall was made by a NOLA artist named Candy Chang, and she’s passing along the “Before I Die” project, which is now popping up in cities all over the world, from San Diego and Portsmouth in America to Lisbon in Portugal and Queretaro in Mexico. I think it’s an amazing idea. I mean, I don’t mean to be riffing on theme here, as you may recall my post about what happened when I my own obituary (sorta). But I love the reminder this “Before I Die” art gives us to check in and see if we’re on the right path in life.

These are some of the things people wrote on the wall in the time after the piece went up:

And so I ask you today...what would you write on the wall?

Give it a good few minutes, really.

Because getting the life we want for ourselves isn’t as simple as flippantly “wishing” for it. We have to want it. We have to say we want it. We have to talk about it and pray about it and write about it. And if we do that writing on a twelve-foot billboard on the street, all the better! Life is about putting your dreams out there and standing proud behind them. I’m going to do that over here in my house. Write my list. Maybe you could do the same.

Write what you want to be, who you want to help, who you want to say “I love you” to, and where you want to travel. It’s like the Lottery: You can’t win if you don’t play, right?

Give yourself some big dreams, write ’em down and—because we don’t actually know how long we have to make it happen in our lifetimes—let’s go on and get crackin’…

Big love,

A friend showed me this image the other day and it made me laugh out loud:

But when I was done laughing, I did think to myself: Man, how many times do we feel like it’s a bad sign and do it anyway? You know…

We notice a red flag on a date (he got up four times to whisper into his phone in the corner!) and yet we keep dating them until the flag is the size of a highway billboard.

We don’t get a good feeling from the doctor (she didn’t even say hello!) but we go back to her anyway and aren’t that surprised when she prescribes the wrong medication.

We hear the car making a strange noise but he says to ignore it (is that “check engine” light really always on?) and then kick ourselves when the car overheats six miles from town.

The point is, life is giving us signs all the time. They’re not signs on the side of the road—they’re signs within us, physiological reactions to what we may not even realize we’re noticing. Our minds have spent a lifetime learning on our behalf, so we owe ourselves the respect to listen our gut! The more we pay attention to our gut instincts, follow our hearts and read the signs, the happier we’ll be.

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Big love,

After my friend Stacey read my book, she said she got better at seeing her future through a positive lens. Instead of saying, “I don’t think it/love/my dream job will ever happen” she started saying, “I know it’s going to happen at some point, and I can’t wait to find out how.”

You never know what's through the next doorway. (New Orleans courtyard by Amy Spencer)

Well, love happened, and she recently wrote to tell me all about it.

While she was happily working hard and having fun, she met her now-fiancé. This is how she explained it in her email to me:

“We were just living our own lives until we finally bumped into each other. And it was like “Oh! There you are! I’ve been looking for you…”

This is the “bump into” plan for happiness.

Think of life as one great big party. Picture it: It’s full of wonderful people, good music, bad dancing, and fab spreads of food. Everyone’s milling about, crossing the room, popping through doorways and running into each other. And if you keep your eyes and ears and attitude open, you’ll meet some great people whether you’re in line for the bathroom, getting a refill on your cocktail or just strolling from one room to the next.

Like any party, you won’t have a blast by staring down at your feet in the corner. You’ll have it from looking up, walking around, and engaging with the room. You won’t bump into anyone if you’re not crossing through the room in the first place.

Follow the “bump into” plan for happiness. Join the party, introduce yourself, seek out the interesting stories, and have fun. By engaging yourself with the room, you just might meet people you really like who make the evening—and life—better than ever.

“Oh, there you are,” you can say to them, “I knew you’d be here.” Just like Stacey did. Then you can head straight to the raw bar and make the most of it.

Big love,

Something weird happened the other day. The “Google alert” I set up to notify me if my name is mentioned online popped up with a strange story. It was a link to my obituary.

Sometimes, when we look at the horizon in the distance, it helps us appreciate the sand we're standing on right now. (Image: Amy Spencer)

Okay, so it wasn’t my obituary. It was for a woman with my name: Amy Spencer of Topeka, Kansas. And she sounded like a great person, survived by her mom, a sister and brother, and her life partner Dixie. “She was a sweet and funny gal,” said one friend who posted on her online obituary guest book. (Whoa, we live in a world with online obituary guestbooks.) Then again, it was full of kind words for Amy’s family that of course I had to read. Why?

Well, here’s a secret about me that only my close friends know: I’m obsessed with death. Like, terrified of it. Scared I might die every single day. I’m not kidding. When I make a safe left turn, I’m grateful I wasn’t careened in a crash by someone blowing the red light. When I say goodbye to my parents as they’re about to take off at the airport, I fear it’s our last goodbye until I get the text that they’re home safe. And when I Tweet a link to a video of a cat stuck in a box, I worry that my final message on earth will be, well, about a cat stuck in a freaking box.

But seriously, all the gloomy thoughts? I think they help. I think my fears about death are exactly what make me so appreciative of life. I’m an optimist because I’m so deliriously happy to be alive. I’m happy my legs work, my heart works, my eyesight works and my laugh works! Because I’m always thinking about people who can’t say the same. Any time I think of dying, it shocks me into feeling even more grateful about living. And for that very same reason, I think we could all gain from thinking just for a second—as bizarre as it sounds—about being at death’s door.

Let me ask you this:

What would your obituary say?

Think about it. You might find it’s the kind of thing that makes you realize you don’t people at your funeral saying, “Gosh, she was so busy with work, I hadn’t her in years!” Or “It’s so sad, because I felt like he wasn’t even enjoying the life he had.” Leave behind a better memory by living a more authentic and full life now.

Amy Lynn Flowers Spencer isn’t with us anymore. But I like to think she can be proud about the life she lived based on the comments people left about all the happiness and joy and laughs and love she left behind. Life is short, right? We never know when one hug could be the last. And when one YouTube link will be linked to you forever. And as depressing as it seems to think about that, think about that.

Let’s appreciate what and who we have around us now, while we’re here. Be a life optimist. Love the people around you. Live the best life you can. And be the person you want to be remembered as. Today. Right now. I want people to say I’m “a sweet and funny gal,” too. Really, I couldn’t ask for more.

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Big love,