This I Believe...

I believe in living every day to the full extent of what it is worth. I believe that far too often people waste every day they have on this Earth. I know that I personally find myself guilty of this too. People ask me what I did over the weekend, when I return to school, and I often have trouble recalling what I even did. I try to live my life to the fullest but I usually give in to my own desire to do the simplest thing possible and I repeat this process making it so dull and dreary and the same that I can barely distinguish last Friday from yesterday. Ive noticed in my life that people are generally ignorant to the fact that no matter what we do we will all eventually die. This is the exostential reality of man. We are all mortal, but few of us are willing to admit our own mortality and I think because of that we dont value what each day can hold.

The perfect story relating to this reality is the poem "The Story We Know." The couple in the poem continually grow closer and closer to each other starting off as infamiliar to each other as humans are to the world at birth. Slowly they grow towards the comfort of the regular and everyday life they are used to, "Sunday, coffee, the Times, a slow day by the fire." But, eventually they see the snow outside of the safety and the comfort of their dull and slowly familiar lifestyle as a reminder that death is going to happen one way or another. Humans are born on a path that leads to death just like snow that is born in the heights of the clouds and slowly moves down until it finally hits the ground and melts. This couple sees this sign and they are afraid of the reality of that they have seen. However, this couple discovers love and closeness when they see realize this truth and they come to a newer sense of commitment to each other because they finally "hold each other against the cold white sign of the way we all begin and end" and develop the close bond that moves them away from the safety of the dull world they lived in before.

Many people who are about to die try to live out the last days they have to the fullest extent because they realize that the eventual thing which they have avoided has finally caught up to them. I think we should all live like this. If we come to understand our own mortality I think we can come to appreciate every day that we are given on the Earth knowing that we may not be here the next day. I believe that our acceptance of this reality will help us to be happier, closer to who we really are and who we can be and especially closer to others.

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