A few weeks ago I was enjoying a lazy Saturday by watching the History Channel in bed. Its one of my favorite things to do .. for some reason I just love to fall asleep to the History Channel, not because the stuff is boring, I find it all fascinating, but for some reason it completely relaxes me and clears my mind I guess. Except for that Saturday .. there was an episode of Decoding the Past on called Doomsday 2012. Basically they showed a bunch of predictions that point to the end of the world in possibly 2012 (and why they don’t point to 2012), including the bible and all major religions. But the two things that caught my attention was that the Mayan calendar ending on 12/21/2012, and supposedly (according to this program) that is the exact date that Earth (and the rest of our solar system) will cross the orbit of the center of our universe (a black hole?) .. anyways .. nobody really knows what crossing that orbit will do, but nothing this program had to say about it sounded very good (polar shift, good bye magnetic fields, hello asteroids). Anyways .. I dont want to blog about if 2012 will be the end of the world or not .. I mean really, how many times have we heard the end is near in our lifetime .. y2k anyone? But what got me thinking .. this is a pretty wide open question .. if you had 5 years left, would you do anything different?
Seriously .. you could have 5 years until cancer gets you, or a car accident or any of a gazillion morbid scenarios .. but just for the sake of discussion, the world you know is ending in 5 years .. would you do anything different?
I’ve asked myself that many times over the past few weeks (since watching that stupid program, which I really enjoyed) .. and the only thing I kept thinking I would do is wait until 2013 to have kids. I mean, its only 5 years away .. and I’m not even sure I want children (I love kids, but the dogs have opened my eyes) .. so why not wait 5 years, just to make sure. I hope I don’t offend anybody in anyway .. this is just something that’s been rolling around in my head for weeks.
I’d love to hear if anybody else out there has a thought about what they’d change if they had 5 years left … leave comments!
If anybody out there is curious about 2012 .. there’s a Discovery Channel program in November that sounds almost exactly like the Decoding the Past episode.
Doomsday 2012: End of Days
Sun., Nov. 18 at 9 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PTThere are various prophecies and oracles from around the world that seem to point to December 21, 2012 as Doomsday. The ancient Mayan Calendar, the medieval predictions of Merlin, the Book of Revelation and the Chinese oracle of the I Ching all forecast this specific date as the end of civilization. A new technology called “The Web-Bot Project” undertakes massive scans of the Internet as a means of predicting the future… and this new technology has turned up the same dreaded date: 2012. Skeptics point to a long history of “failed Doomsdays,” but many oracles of doom throughout history have a disturbingly accurate track record. As the year 2012 ticks ever closer, this one-hour special speculates whether there are credible reasons to believe these doomsayers.
Wow, that is really hard to think about. Mike and I decided we would stop putting $ into retirement accounts and spend it all on trips.
I’ve read about that before…very scary! Maybe this is kind of strange, but I think about that a lot. In my line of work, I see people who have went through horrible tragedies, pain, loss, abuse, and who have lost their way. It keeps me in check with reality. Pretty much daily I think about how fortunate I am and I try to not let my fears stop me from doing things. Life gets hectic…we all get consumed with our own lives and don’t stop enough to take it all in!
Hopefully I’ll do those things anyway 
Thanks Erica for making me think 
To answer your question…I don’t think I’d change anything! I would keep going on the same path I am now. I have a great family, and friends, and I know they all know how much I care about them.
Well..I would probably go sky diving, and go to Italy
Kathy
Thinking about this makes me realize how much I enjoy my life now. Although, if the world was ending, we would definitely quit our jobs and cash out our retirement money and spend five years traveling, relaxing, and charging up a debt we’d never have to repay.
I agree with the comments above… I’d pull out my retirement money and travel and enjoy my every day life! I don’t think I could live 5 years without working, but I could surely cut back on the way I live and go from full time to part time work to have more time for the people I love!
After my mom died, I always had something in my head that told me “if you could die any moment, make sure you live every day to it’s fullest”. I don’t always follow this, but I try. That’s why I travel so much and photograph the things that I want to see more often (since I can’t always see my friends, family of favorite places daily). I try to laugh as much as I can and do the things that matter most. I hate that stress makes me lazy and depressed, because that’s free time in the evenings that could be spent with hobbies and people I love. I never go to bed angry with anyone. I always look for the best in people and don’t spend time with gossip or drama. That’s how I live these days. If I died tomorrow, I’d be happy with what i’ve accomplished in my life (outside of work). Now, to get work on track so I can be proud of that too…
I would like to see that special, thanks for posting the details.
The main thing that I would change would be to move the family to Alabama so that we could be closer to both of our families. Right now, I don’t have any desire to live in Alabama again, but if I knew that I only had 5 years, I’d sacrifice Florida for family.