15 Minutes Remaining

After seven amazing days in paradise, my wife Nimisha and I were finishing breakfast overlooking a beautiful sunrise bouncing off Makana Mountain as the waves crashed against the shore. After a fun-filled week where we’d done everything you could possibly imagine – hikes, cruises, helicopter tours, off-road adventures – we were just taking in those last few drops before we headed home. The trip was a respite from a chaotic year full of personal and professional growth and challenges. We’d welcomed our first child, seen exponential business growth, and deepened our commitments to community involvement. It was a great year, but a busy one, which made this the perfect time to reflect and look back on all that we’d been through and prepare for what was to come.

Nimisha wanted to memorialize that precise moment. After a deep, meditative breath and a long purposeful exhale she looked at me and said:

“This is our last day here and I want to remember this exact moment so that when things get crazy again we can look at a photo and reflect on how we feel right now.”

She called the server over to snap a quick pic. He enthusiastically obliged and framed it perfectly. Our last memory of paradise.

-Click-

“OK, I took a few. Hopefully you’ll like at least a couple of them. I couldn’t tell on the last one though, I think you got a message while I was snapping it”

He was right. I got a message:

EMERGENCY ALERT – BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

A natural skeptic, I’m usually the first person to poke holes, even if in this case it was just an obvious attempt to try to keep my cool. I went through my mental checklist

“Why aren’t there air raid sirens?”

“Where are the mainstream news alerts?”

“Why didn’t TMZ get the scoop???”

I reluctantly reasoned that the last five words of the message were written specifically for skeptics like me.

“Hey, AARON. You can try and poke all the holes you want but THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”

So, if this is real, that meant our time was almost halfway up. I’d read that an ICBM could make the trip from Pyongyang to Hawaii in about 15-20 minutes. Since I’d spent my first five fact checking the message and the next five googling “taking shelter in a nuclear attack” I only had 10, maybe 15 minutes tops. It was time to face the horrible reality.

I don’t know that I ever thought about how I would react to this type of news, but I don’t think I could have predicted the way I actually did. Maybe it was shock, or temperament, who knows? Whatever it was, Nimisha and I were utterly resigned to the fact that death was coming, there was nothing we could do about it, so we’d best decide exactly how we want to spend our last moments on earth. So, we decided we would say goodbye to each other and to our parents.

By this point, the room was in hysterics. Everyone was confused and upset. Some looked for shelter others for provisions. Many were aligned in prayer circles, consoling one another. One woman made an altar out of the ballroom. Some prayed for mercy, others for protection, still others for peace. There was no cellular reception in the interior of the resort so, you had to decide whether to go inside and forfeit any contact with others for a chance at survival, however small. Or, stay outside and say goodbye to your family back home. There was also a small but distinct group that just went about their business as usual – deciding to enjoy their last meal in peace as they looked up at the sky to see the deadly fireworks display that would be their last.

My wife, selfless until the very end, was initially hesitant to call our parents because she didn’t want to “stress them out.” Once she realized they’d likely see it on CNN soon after anyway she quickly relented.

“Hi Mom. Yeah, we’re OK. Yeah, it’s been great, the weather is awesome.  Yup, off-roading was a blast and the cruise was fun. Listen, I hate that I’m calling like this but we got this text and…well, we love you very, very much. Please take good care of Diya as we know you will. And when she’s old enough to understand please let her know how very much we cared about her.”

-BUZZZZZ-

 “Hey Mom? Mom? Stop crying, Mom you won’t believe this. I just got another text it was a false alarm. We’re good. Love you, I’ll call you back when we finish breakfast and get more details.”

And just like that, it was done. I’ve never exhaled so hard in my life and I don’t think anyone else there had either. As we reflected on the morning over an afternoon of Mai Tais the inevitable question arose – When you thought you were going to die, did you have any regrets?

My initial answer was “no.” I really tried to be the best husband and father I could with the limited time that I had, I loved my family and my friends and told them so regularly, I worked hard and gave my team my very best effort, and I contributed to the community in ways that I believed were impactful. That’s not to say that I didn’t have room to do more or do better. In fact, quite the contrary I have tons of room to grow and improve. I’m just saying that I didn’t regret my effort. I put deliberate focus on those areas and I genuinely tried.

I did have one regret though, and the more I thought about it the bigger it got. I’d wished I said thank you more often. I realized that the reason I didn’t have any big personal or professional regrets was because I was incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by so many amazing people who helped put me in positions to win personally and professionally. And even though I realized that and appreciated it deeply I hadn’t shared it as much as I could have. If I’d died on the island that day, my “secret” would have died with me. And that bummed me out. I wanted to thank the relatives who supported me and cared for me throughout my entire life, I wanted to thank the teachers and professors who believed in me and encouraged me, I wanted to thank the mentors and advisors who invested time in my career and personal development, I wanted to thank the friends who had my back and heard me during tough times, the partners who invited me to work alongside them, the teammates who have joined us in the trenches and fully committed themselves, and the investors who trusted us enough to make it possible, and the communities that have embraced my business and my family.

I could go on and on but the point is this – that brief but very credible threat made me realize that I don’t want to leave this planet without letting the people who contributed greatly to my time on it know how much I appreciate them. It’s been said that “feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it” I’m done toting wrapped gifts around. Thank you for reading.

If you’ve read this far we’re basically friends now so maybe you don’t mind sharing.

What would you do if you had 15 minutes to live? If it’s important to you, how do you practice gratitude?