If you had to sum up your philosophy of life, what would you say?
I recently had a few correspondences with an old friend from school days who is going through some health issues. I spoke pretty matter-of-factly, and upon re-reading it, it struck me that this is probably closest to my current life philosophy (names have been removed to protect the innocent). There’s no new revelations here, it just sums up my feelings:
“The closer we get to the finish line brings reality crashing in on us. As much as we’d like it to go on, we realize the ending is inevitable. So, we might as well live while we’re living. Nobody knows for sure what the next chapter is, if any. The cool thing is we get to choose how we’ll spend the remainder of our days, whether the last be today or 30 years from now. That fact became clear to me during my second heart attack: I had surrendered and felt myself slipping down that dark hole that leads to eternity. This was just as the EMTs arrived and revived me. But there was a peace that I cannot adequately explain right after I had surrendered.
There was no fear of dying, it was a quiet peaceful resignation. I always say that we lead our lives based upon one of the two core emotions: love or fear. I chose love and rejected fear. True selfless love for all people, animals, things, experience, etc.” It’s only macabre if you’re living under the false spectre of fear. (I hope that makes sense.)
“No fear. Put simply, everything’s gonna be okay.”