Everyone has an egg timer with their name on it...

...just ask Terry Pratchett! I am a great believer in fate and for those of you who do not read Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, the egg timer referenced in the title of this blog will mean very little, but is symbolic of my view that whilst you have every opportunity to make the most of your time on this planet of ours, that time is measured and when it runs out, there is not an awful lot you can do about it.

On Discworld, DEATH has a room full of egg timers, each with a name on it and when the sand runs out in any one of those devices, HE is waiting...

The events of recent days, with the Costa Concordia that is making global news and the myriad local news stories that will have been part of your lives wherever you read this, support the view that when your time is up, it's up. 

Every day people survive events other people die in - be they of natures making in tsunamis or avalanches or man made in terrorist attacks, car crashes or cruise ships sinking - and those survivors are left asking "why?” Some people survive medical conditions to defy the doctors or walk away from a snapping bungee cord, why? because it was not their time to die. Their egg timer still had sand in it.

Whether you choose to believe it is a higher being making these life and death decisions, a random set of events that create the opportunity for death to step in, or your egg timer running out of sand, is entirely up to you. 

I believe that accepting the end will come gives you the opportunity to make the most of the time you have.

That need not be in a humanity-saving, global news-worthy way - just by being the best human being you can be, you make your presence on this planet a positive one. When a colleague is having a bad day, make them a cuppa, next time you catch someone’s eye randomly in the street, give them a smile - after all you never know when your egg timer will run out of sand, so you might as well finish up with a smile on your face if you possibly can :-)