Science, Religion, Politics and in the pursuit of truth – HappyPsychotic

Way back when I was in high school, I remember my world religions teacher teaching us (the class) about Zen Buddhism and actually, he told us that was his “religion” (if it can be called that).  The only point that stuck with me was that he told how ideally, a Zen Buddhist person would never hold on to any grudge or anything.  Someone in the class even asked what he would do if somebody murdered his son and he said that he would be angry, but that he would try to accept it and move on with life.  I laughed to myself when I heard that and though he was stupid.  I don’t think he’s stupid anymore.

I watched a movie the other day about a mother who couldn’t deal with living after her young child died.  I can understand this to a certain extent (I realize that nobody can really understand unless it’s happened to them personally), allowing the guilt and the second-guessing of yourself to allow such a tragedy.  I’m sure that anyone reading this blog has known the pain of having a friend die and how it affects so much of your life.  But lately I’ve been looking at this problem from a different angle.

Here’s the thing – life is short.  That’s it.  Think of it, whatever age you are now, you will never get that back again.  The year 2009 is gone and never to return, so if you are just coasting through your life, putting in your time doing the same old things every day, me thinks you will regret it.  So what does this have to do with losing a friend?  Simple, let it go, let them go, move on.  I know it sounds harsh but really, if they’re dead, they’re dead and they don’t care if you are remembering them, or mourning them or anything ’cause they’re dead.  I think it’s great to remember the good things about lost friends and take the good parts of their lives and learn from them but just move on and let it go, because Life Is Short.

Really, you should think about death often.  You should think about your own death often and how near it is.  Even if you’re not even 20 years old yet, do you think death is far away?  I remember turning 20 and now I’m closing in on 40 and I don’t know where the years went sometimes.  Think about how short the rest of your days are and LIVE!  Do what you want to do today.  I even think that if you do something stupid and lose all your money and end up destitute it doesn’t really matter does it?  ‘Cause life is short and you gave it your best shot.  Do you really want to be sitting around in your old age home thinking about all the missed opportunities you had in your life?  And they are missed opportunities for no reason except you were lazy or scared to try.

Glenn is thinking about making an early retirement in Costa Rica.  Maybe it won’t work out and he’ll have to come crawling back home after a few years but so what?  He went for it and he tried and he won’t be wondering “what if?”.  If you’ve read my old blogs, you know some of the stuff that I do that is wild and exciting and I want more.  I’m Dieing to Live.