The Time for You is Now.

The handsome, strapping young man in this picture is my dad.

I wouldn’t say my dad was my hero, but he was definitely a bigger than life character to me. My contemporaries will get these references: He was John Robinson without the lost space ship; Ricky Ricardo sans the “Babaloo”. He seemed to me, quite often, to be the strongest, smartest, bravest and most interesting man in the room.

But as I got older, I started to view him differently. There was an air of intensity about him, whether he was working or playing, that fascinated me, but that I did not share. I take more after my mom in most ways. That intensity, while providing him with a rewarding career and some dramatic stories, also accorded him a heart attack before his 50th birthday, three bypass surgeries and two years of congestive heart failure before he finally let his weathered body go earlier this year.

Since he didn’t smoke, do drugs and rarely drank, his (and mine) hereditary propensity for cardio vascular disease (CVD), coupled with his personality, eating habits and lack of regular exercise, I feel strongly contributed to his long physical decline over the last two decades of his life, and, most likely, well before.

So what does this have to do with you? Well, very few of us do not have a familial history of either cancer or heart disease, and some have both. That’s just the hand we’re dealt. And while cancer gets a lot of press, by a good margin, statistics show that many more of us will die of CVD than any other cause, including cancer. What we do about realizing that potential or staving it off as much and as long as possible is completely up to us. And that becomes even more true as we pass 40, 50 and beyond.

I am currently about twice the age my dad was in this picture. I don’t expect to be around forever; nor do I want to be.

But I know that the choices I’ve made, and encourage and guide others to make, has had a profound effect on the quality of not just my life, but the lives of those who mean the most to me. That’s my legacy and, by extension, because I wanted to have a different experience than my father’s, his as well. Every generation does (hopefully) a little better, right?

Do you want to be able to do all the things you enjoy, or maybe haven't done yet but still want to, with as much passion and for as long as possible? Do you want to wake up each morning grateful for what you can still do or regretful for what you may have squandered? Is your self-care regimen a tribute to the folks who raised you and an example to those who you are raising (or have raised), or, perhaps, something less?

At one point, this picture from yesterday was one man’s “today”. Like him, we all have choices we can make that will determine the quality of our respective tomorrows.

What choice will you make?

Dan Taylor, ACE, NASM-CPT, is owner and head trainer at Pleasanton-based Tri Valley Trainer. They offer personal training and small group fitness solutions and an innovative, medically endorsed web-based group healthy eating coaching program.