Because you never know...

So... I haven't posted in a while... Well, I've been working at camp and getting settled into the school year, so that's all the excuse that I need. Besides, you should all know that I wouldn't post anything until I had something really inspired to put out there to get me started again... Well, here it is (it's long, so, of course, I got it all put together right about the same time my coputer died... really died: it's not just taking a break... so maybe this is a tribute to the poor little thing). It is essentially creatively written philosophy of sorts:

Because you never know…

You never know what might happen. That is the most basic, ultimate truth in life. You just don’t know. I found that out the hard way… Or, I guess, it would be fairer to say that everyone else found that out the hard way… But then I did learn something too, even if the rest of the world will never really know it… I guess the only fair way to put it is that everyone found it out the hard way… Or at least everyone in my life… oh, whatever, it doesn’t matter.

I’m dead.

Nothing matters when you’re dead… or at least that’s what I thought. I always believed that there was life after death, but I figured that you didn’t really care about the world or at least that everything seemed okay after you were dead… After all, isn’t eternal life, at least for those of us who lived good lives, supposed to be filled with the wonderful experience of living forever in the presence of God? Well, not so much as it turns out.

What goes on in the living world still matters to me. What happens to the people I left behind still makes me happy; it still makes me sad. Things and people still make me feel all kinds of emotions that I always thought were vain concepts of souls trapped in the only form of life that we could understand… Nope, wrong again.

As it turns out, I was wrong a lot. I never really understood what everything was about.
Sure, I got most of it right in life, otherwise I’d be too busy screaming, or whatever it that they do in that other place, to write this, or think it… it’s hard to describe how things work in this next life to people still living their first life… I’m trying to use words and descriptions that will get the basic idea across even if the intricacies are lost in translation… Anyway, I got most of it right: Love the lord your God; Love your neighbor as yourself. I even understood what was meant when the ‘original’ Greek texts used the ‘agape’ version of love (there are multiple words in ancient Greek that mean ‘love’ in English, and each implies something different). I did everything that I could to love God and everyone around me unconditionally. Sure, it was hard at times, but it felt really good trying, and I wasn’t half bad at it either if I do say so myself… But I missed something; I missed something that makes a big difference in how you feel in the next life.

Love the lord your God; Love your neighbor as yourself. Love them both right now with everything you’ve got because you never know what might happen… I forgot that second part… Never put off until later what you can do right now because you never know what might happen… Who knows? You could die… like me.

I did a lot of good in my life, maybe even more than most, but that doesn’t matter here. Everyone here led a good life. Everyone here did a lot of good, and most did a lot more than they thought they did. What matters in this life is not how much good you did but how much you left undone…

Everyone has a certain amount of good that they can do in their lives. Those who live their lives to the fullest, doing what they can to help others and showing how much they love God and the people around them, are the ones who are the happiest. Those who let too many opportunities pass them by, who left too many things undone and unsaid, are the ones who find themselves miserable, at least for a while or from time to time (it is ‘paradise’ after all), in this life after life…

That’s where I am. Looking back, I did a lot with my life, but I didn’t do enough. God gave me so many gifts, but I only used them when it was convenient. I spent a lot of time just skating through life, letting the world come to me… I was good at it too… I didn’t just get by; I passed just about every test put in front of me with flying colors. I excelled at almost everything I did… But I didn’t use my gifts; I just let them carry me through life, doing good when it kept me from being bored… Sometimes, it seemed like I didn’t really care as long as I was entertained… Now, that wasn’t really true, but I always thought that I’d have time. I was young. I just wanted to relax, learn, and observe. I didn’t think that I was ready to go out and change the world; that was a part of my life that was always somewhere in the future… it was never in the right now.

One thing that hurts in this life even more than knowing that I could have done more to help those faceless people, and even those people that I knew in life, that so desperately needed it was something that was so easy that even my lazy butt should have been doing it all the time. You have to show the people that you love how much you love them, and give them the chance to show you how much they love you. It’s not even about big displays either. Sometimes it can be just telling them that you love them or making them feel special every so often. That’s what’s most important. That’s what makes a difference in this life…

Sure, it still hurts to look back at the people who you loved and who loved you grieving over your death… I’ve talked to a lot of souls, and no matter where they were in their life when they moved on, it sucked to leave people in pain… but it hurt even more for me and others like me who didn’t show the people they cared about how much they loved them… I was young… There would always be more time… If they died, they’d know, right? They will, but is that enough?

Doing good… Loving God… Sharing your love with those around you… Go do those things right now. Don’t come to regret anything. Don’t leave anything undone… For me, I always thought that there would be more time… I always thought that I would get everything done later, sometime in the future… Doing things right away never seemed important to me…

But it should have been…

… because you never know what might happen…

That drunk driver didn’t know that I wasn’t ready to die.