This blog post title is the subtitle for The Number.  It’s a book about planning for retirement or, as a recent reviewer says after considering the book’s treatment of changing impressions of retirement, transitioning and downshifting. 

I haven’t read The Number, but I love the title.  I love what it makes me think of.  Indeed, it makes me think. 

I don’t know that most folks consider what life requires.  What does your living and sleeping, eating and thriving actually take?

The book title pulls me into a mild trance where I start counting costs, stacking up mental and emotional debits and credits, and subtracting the life-diminishing relationships I’ve been in.  It makes me question what I will need for the life before me. 

I don’t know all the answers.  I don’t know what I’ll need when I’m 40 or 49 or 56 or 78.  I don’ t know that I’ll live into my 80s or 90s.  I’m like an old poet who said he couldn’t know the measure of his days or how frail his life really was.  But the title pushes me to think about the path, long or short, in front of me.

Two phrases in the subtitle pop out, “The Rest” and “It Will Cost.”

The Rest.

There is something ahead.  Something is before me.  That encourages me and makes me want to see.  I’m curious anyway.  I want to know what the rest will include.  I want to know who will be there and who won’t.  I want experience my life now and then.  I want the best of faith to be tested.

It Will Cost.

These words are settling to me.  They’re sober, but they bring me a gift that anchors me and readies me to give.  When you know something costs, you prepare for it.  You count your coins.  You endorse your checks.  Life will cost.  We’ve lived through costly life, most of us, and we can write pages and pages of testimony.

If you had to title your life’s book–the life you’ve lived thus far or the life you see in your dreams–what would that title be?