In lieu of the planned post tonight, due to time constraints I will instead share a personal anecdote. Tonight I was invited to the 40th anniversary of a local Toastmasters Club, as I had been its president some 15 years ago or so. As E F Schumacher explains, one of the forms of knowledge is seeing oneself as others see us. Different people, whom I haven’t seen in over a decade, remembered different impressions of me.

One such was a gentleman who recalled this story. He was called upon to give an impromptu talk on the question, “If you had just 5 minutes to live, what would you do differently with your life?” He recalled that he stumbled through some explanation about seeing life more clearly and changing his values. What is more significant is that he remembered the critique I made to his talk.

I had objected that it would be a shame to change one’s life values just for another five minutes of life. A man ought to die as he lives. So much for death bed conversions.