I believe in Heaven. And I believe in Hell. I believe in life after death, and I believe in a higher power. And even if I were to pick between the different theories of evolution, I'd still pick intelligent design any day. Coz if those (heaven, hell and the higher power) really don't exist then we're not in fact heading anywhere, are we?
I've been having an interesting couple of weeks. The work's killing me, as I'd expected, but I'm learning how to cope with that, [read I'm slowly developing an addiction for coffee and pain pills for the constant headaches...]. But further than that I'm thinking more and more about life. You see time is an interesting thing. It's absolute. It never stops. The world spins madly on. And with each passing day we grow older. Moments pass and we can never reclaim them. We can never take anything back. Don't you sometimes wish that life was actually a rehearsal? So that the next time round you'd know what not do and where not to go? [and which boss not to rile up?] There's a case to be made for the element of surprise: the never having been there done that makes it that much more interesting, yes, but these days I'm finding myself more and more wishing it wasn't a just-once thing. And that we're gonna find ourselves here some time later and we're gonna know enough to not take the road less travelled.
Three weeks ago one of my best friends had a baby girl. She seemed so happy, almost made me believe motherhood really does change someone. Then a week later another friend lost his mother - to cancer, after a long and arduous battle. Yet another week later, now last week, a different friend himself died - in a road accident. It's this - the frailty and fickleness of life that's causing me to get apprehensive. Literally, one minute you're here, the next you're not. Or one minute you're not here, and a few drinks and a hundred-year-old condom later [or something, I wouldn't know... :)] you are. It's sometimes hard to really live it up and enjoy something when you're not sure if it's for keeps. When you don't know when something's going to be taken away, it's natural to not wanna get in too deep, so it's easy to let go. The paradox is that it's for this very reason that we should aim to live life to the full. While it's still there. It's like Jack London said, "I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
Coming so close to a miracle as magical as the creation of a new life, and then soon after a loss as tragic as death in the slowest most painful way imaginable: you gotta wanna believe there's something more. "He was born, he lived, had kids, died a rich old man." That can't be it. There's gotta be more to life than chasing out every temporary high to satisfy me. Heaven. Hell, even. Hope. And so I believe in heaven. You see, as each day passes, as we get older, we're definitely heading somewhere. No one really knows where we're going, or what's waiting for us when we get there, but we're definitely heading somewhere. Whether it's heaven, eternal damnation, or pure nothingness, the bliss of death, away from this, the unbearable lightness of being, I don't know. And no one does know. But the one thing we can say for sure, with absolute certainty, is that every so often there are moments in our lives that take us to another place. Heaven on earth, we call it. And maybe for now that's all we need to know. We love constancy. We're comfortable with stability. But if those moments really are a precursor for what's to come, then I can't wait to get there, wherever it be!
And all these great men of the past don't help any; they make it seem so easy. "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves so that, if the British Empire and her Commonwealth should last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"; "Be the change you want to see in the world."; "Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."; "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession... Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much."; "I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor."; "The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say, as I have been able to say - We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology."; "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."; such authority, and yet none of those words sound to me like the words of a superhuman. Just an ordinary person with a vision. They simply just saw a future and worked towards realizing it in their own small ways. But time and time again since those words and others were said they have spurred men on to action, created success where there probably would have been none, stood the test of time and continued inspiring generation after generation. The best use of one's life is to create something out of it that will outlive it. Even if it's just words, these men clearly left a legacy behind. I wonder how many of us are going to be able to say that...
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