"If you had only 37 days to live would you feel happy with the story you have lived so far? How would you express that story, learn fro it, leave it for others?"

Patti Digh raises those questions in her blog, 37days and uses it as the premise for 37days retreats (there's one coming up in September 2008).

Digh's work explores such questions as:

• How do we make meaning of our lives through story?


• What are the stories we tell ourselves about others? About ourselves? How do those stories reduce us?


• What learning and significances are right in front of us, in the stories of our days?

These questions and this premise remind me of the importance of pursuing our passions. As Austin Hill of Billions with Zero Knowledge writes: "Passion is something you can’t pay for, it has to be something that is shared - and stories are the ways we have shared our passions since we grunted our way out of our painted caves." Is our story one of following our passion, doing the things we love? If not, change the story and change your life. As Digh's work reminds us, life is far too short not to love the story we're creating.

This post answers the question, why 37 days? Why not some other number?