Make that "Fifty things to do before you die."
From today's Los Angeles Times...
Dave Freeman, an advertising agency executive who co-wrote "100 Things to Do Before You Die," an adventure-seeking and often unconventional travel guide that personified the way he lived his life, has died. He was 47.
Freeman died Aug. 17 after falling and hitting his head at his home in Venice, said his father, Roy.
Published in 1999, "100 Things" was one of the first contemporary books to create a travel agenda based on 100 sites and then market it with a title that reminded mortal readers that time was limited.
Time was limited indeed.
Freeman, like many, many people, was deeply effected by the events of September 11, 2001. He watched the attacks on the World Trade Center from his New York loft, and decided life was short and moved back to California to be closer to his family. The book idea grew from this self-awareness of one's own mortality.
His accidental death brings a sense of irony that reminds me f the death of Jim Fixx...
...the author of the 1977 best-selling book, The Complete Book of Running. [Fixx] is credited with helping start America's fitness revolution, popularizing the sport of running and demonstrating the health benefits of regular jogging.
Fixx dropped dead of a massive heart attack, and it was learned after he died that he had near 95% blockage of one artery and 85% blockage of a second, and 50% of a third.
Perhaps the twisted message to take away is that the more one philosophizes over how to manage one's life, the more one risks some bad karma. Or not.
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