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How To Know If You're Alive
How do you know?
Don't think too hard about it.
Some would rather let life pass them by, with no proof they have lived except for old age. They eat, sleep, wake up and fear dying before going back to bed again. That's it.
Why are we here? To live.
And what is life? Life is both a gift and a project, a journey, if you will. We either self-preserve (which is a low view) or pursue all that is good, virtue --just the way God made everything, pronouncing it "good" (the high view).
So it comes down to a choice:
"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day;
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way . . .
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking;
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death" (Pink Floyd, "Time")
OR (as Longfellow says, "Let us, then, be up and doing"):
"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait. " (Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life")
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way . . .
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking;
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death" (Pink Floyd, "Time")
OR (as Longfellow says, "Let us, then, be up and doing"):
"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait. " (Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life")
That’s a question for you to answer today: What proof do I have that I’m really alive?
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