Every so often we come across someone, perhaps even a complete stranger, with a story that makes us think. This past month I was seated next to a senior couple on a five-hour flight. I sat near the window, the wife in the middle, and the husband was near the aisle. Naturally, we greeted each other before takeoff. I didn’t know at that moment when first meeting Patricia and Herold that they were holding a few keys to life that I would later learn.

Patricia was well mannered and reserved. Her voice was soft, but clear and sophisticated. I could tell she was wise from many life experiences. She started telling me about the reason for her visit to Europe. She had a second home in Kiel, Germany that her and her husband stayed in every three months, and then she spun off into giving me, what I can imagine, almost every detail of her adult life. I’ll spare you many of the details, even though her story is incredible, and get to my point.

I spent about 3.5 hours of this flight in full attention to Patricia’s story. Her husband's uncle was apart of the team that launched the first U.S. NASA shuttle. In the 80’s she was given $500,000 by the Canadian government to start the first program for women to teach them computer and basic professional skills so they can be assets to the workforce. She gave hundreds of women the ability to get jobs dominated by men, and she stressed the importance of relying on only oneself. She went on and on to tell me about the hurdles she passed in her life, like having to fake a name on her resume to get jobs in a mans world, and her husbands many illnesses. Not once did I lose interest in her story because there was never a dull moment. But after about three hours of hearing it, she turned to me and said, “So what’s your story?”

This was a question I wasn’t prepared for. A woman with so much life lived had one of the most compelling and beautiful autobiographies I’ve ever heard. Nothing I told her would compare, which was completely fine because she had outlived me about 50 years, but it still provoked some thought in me. Everyone reaches the end of their life with a story, all are worth telling, but not all make you want to listen. We're all the designers of our own lives. It’s easy to get distracted by our everyday routines and forget about the mark we want to leave behind, whatever it may be.

So often we go on limiting ourselves from our full potential because what we aspire to do is too much of a risk. In the later years of our life though, what story will that safe method give us? Will it be a story worth listening to?