I am a big fan of Seth Godin. I read his blog daily, and I’ve read several of his books (and have the others on my to-read list). He is a very powerful writer, not least because what he writes is so simple.
A few weeks ago, he wrote this post about health care directives (Powers of Attorney for Personal Care in Ontario). The basic premise? We are all going to get sick. We are all going to need to make decisions about our health care. Many of us will have to rely on others to make those decisions. Leaving those decisions to other people, and requiring them to make them for you, is a bit selfish. As he writes, “Don’t make the people you love guess and then live with the memory of that guessing.”
The end will come for us all. Planning for it will not make it come any sooner, or stave it off any longer, but we can make plans so that it is a little easier, both for us and for those we leave behind.