I spent most of today at work researching quotes about nature for a book about the great outdoors.
Copyright rules state that you can only quote from a source who has been dead for 70+ years. So I found myself in the strange position of finding a great quote and then looking up the author on Wikipedia to see when they died (hoping it was over 70 years ago).
After a while, I started reading about these people’s lives; Mark Twain… Henry David Thoreau… John Muir… Rachel Carson… Helen Keller…
As I read about their childhoods, their careers and their love lives, I was hit with the realisation that these were REAL people who once lived, just as you and I do now. These weren’t meaningless words on a screen. These were people who once had hopes and dreams, good days and bad days…
Only their moment had passed.
I found myself thinking how short our lives are. And how perhaps, one day, another researcher in a publishing company somewhere might spend the day eagerly Googling you or I to see when we died.
It was a sobering thought. But it was also inspiring and brought me up short:
Life is not a dress rehearsal. We’ve only got one shot at this. Are we, hand on heart, living life as we should?
Katherine Bassford 
In answer, nope not even close, and a big thank you for the reminder. It’s so easy to forget with all the day to day distractions.
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“Nope, not even close” – ditto for me and most of the people I know I think! It’s so easy to forget we’re only here once… Cheers Mr P.
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Not really thought about that before. But of course you’re right. Yes we should use that thought to inspire us. Actually I quite like the idea of some writer or publisher in the future looking us up. Because that would mean we were successful and who knows famous writers. Future technology may mean they could type or say my name and I would appear as a hologram. Now that is a sobering thought. I’ve never been photogenic lol x
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Ha, I wrote that line wondering whether any of us would ever be famous enough for a researcher to be looking us up in order to quote us in a book!! Appearing as a hologram would be an amazing marketing strategy :-) x
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