Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. ~Stephen Vincent Benét
Life is short. Even a long life is short.
Some people believe in an afterlife, or a life after this life. Often these people also believe that the next life is better than this present life. It is as if this life we have now is just to prepare us for the next one, or as if this life is our time to be assessed, evaluated, and the quality of our next life depends on how well we perform during this probationary life.
If you believe in an after life, you may also believe that your enjoyment and your needs just don’t matter so much, because things no matter how disappointing things are for you now, you get to go to a perfect place, where some higher power will be absolutely sure that this time, you’re going to have a great time. It doesn’t matter how common your life was, how belittled you were, how beat down, because things are going to be great in the next life.
In my mind it is a stupid idea. If you are wrong, if you have placed all your happy eggs in your Next Life Basket, and there is no next life, then you have wasted the one and only life you have.
I do, however, think that one can believe in God and a next life and still enjoy this present life. I just think most of us, thinking we have an eternal second chance will just not be as diligent about squeezing as much joy from this life as is possible.
Her is my new year’s resolution: and I never do this: I want to care about myself, and commit myself to squeezing all the joy possible out of the lemons of my life, and be willing to add enough sugar to taste the sweetness of each moment, each day. When faced with fun and unnecessary chores, like folding underware, I will opt for fun.
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