The third year anniversary of my kidney transplant (transplantiversary) passed just a few days ago…

Despite the cool wet weather, I was drinking chilled French champagne to celebrate my anniversary – not expensive enough to be a NAME, but expensive enough to be fancy.  I was wishing I had bought some of those delicious biscuits designed by French people specifically for dipping in champagne.

I was actually doing a kind of new year’s stock take – thinking about where my life is, compared to where I thought it could go in my early new life euphoria.  I was feeling as if this second chance has thus far been rather wasted.

It’s not entirely my fault, I was quite vague in the planning – I just wanted to live large, suck the marrow from the bones of life and all that.  I did plan a trip and have a wonderful time in Italy (with Toseland and Toseland) so some good came of it.  But the problem is you can’t really plan a life when you don’t know a great deal about the person you are planning for, and as it turns out I don’t know a great deal about this post-transplant self.

Katy says I can be anyone, and do anything I want, but I’m not sure what I want (aside from world peace, an end to global poverty and a decent cup of tea).

And so we come back to the eternal philosophical question of what makes a good life.  In particular a good life for me.  In an ideal universe…  No wait a minute, what is my ideal universe?

• What things does it value?
• How would those values guide my choices?
• Does any of it in fact matter?

Katy thinks I’m putting rather too much thought into this, but it will become apparent that this is just what I do.  The way I see it, I am simply making a few considered decisions now, in order to save time and effort later.  And in that way, I can make coherent, efficient (hopefully effective), yet ultimately lazy choices.  That must surely help with the marrow sucking.

Tune in next week to see what my first value is.

Values