[i]How will you spend your final minute?[/i] It’s a pretty standard question, yet the answer always changes. The first to ask me was my dad. I was five at the time, my head full of journeys and adventure. I said I’d use it to go exploring. A minute in the in the Amazon jungle and another in Atlantis was all I believed I needed. Back then I didn’t have the concept of fractions, so I told my father the two things I wanted the most. He laughed and gave me five million to spend on education. 

The second person to ask me was my first girlfriend. We met in high-school just as I was spending the last quarter of the time my father had lent me. I was so foolish back then, I said I’d spent my last minute with her and she took me on it. Every day while studying, I’d secretly spend a few hundred minutes of my stash on her. She spent some of hers on me as well, but shortly after graduation she took my minutes and moved on. 

The next to ask was myself. I had so many big plans back then, ideas that would change the world, bringing joy and fascination to everyone. I had told myself not to spend a minute more on love or friendship, but instead build a career, an empire of my own. I thought I had it all figured out, that if I took a loan and spent it on ten things one was bound to succeed, making me rich, granting me more minutes that I could possibly use. I tried and lost most of, twice having to return and beg my parents. My father would often grumble, sparing me a few minutes every now and again, before heading off somewhere. My mother, however, always had enough for me, no mater what I’d done.

Now I ask the question once more, seated upon the throne I’ve built. It’s not a big throne, it’s quite small actually, but it’s mine. I’d invested millions of minutes into a career, And somehow it paid off. It wasn’t what I wanted, but good enough that I didn’t care. At one point I’d decided to spent some minutes on people—a million here, a few hundred thousand there. I’d manage to get myself a fairly large group of acquaintances, plus a few highly valued friends. I found myself a wife, and gladly shared half my minutes with her...just as she shared hers with me. We had fun, had children, went on adventures in Africa, the Amazon forest, the Aztec ruins. We spent minutes on stupid things that made us laugh, with zero regrets. 

Today my daughter stands before me, old enough to understand the question, but not its meaning. I expected her answer to be ponies, toys, or dancing lessons; adventures in far away places and on the verge of imagination. Instead, she just looked at me and smiled.

“You and mommy,” she said in her innocent childlike voice. “I want to spend my last minute on the two of you.”