Publisher's Note
It was 22 years ago when I arrived in Canada and chose Calgary, Alberta to be my home. Leaving my family and friends behind, it was a new adventure for me to be in a new country without knowing anyone. That was the time I looked for a Filipino community paper and never found any, [...]
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Page added on November 21, 2016
By Erwin D Maramat
(Part 1 of 3)
You and I could die anytime—nothing can be as truthful as that. Every goodnight kiss, every farewell, every sweet embrace could well be our very last. There’s no guarantee that we’ll be here the next day. Death is inevitable and all we can hope for is that it would be swift and painless. When caught in that final moment, in retrospect, how did your life play out? Is it as meaningful as you could have possibly made it to be? Have you actually loved whole heartedly?
No, I’m not being pessimistic. However, not everyone wants to talk about the issue except maybe for life insurance agents who use the topic as a convincing sales pitch. People come up with so many excuses to be miserable about their lives, but dying is a pretty darn good reason to live life positively. While the thought of death is dreadful, not living life to the fullest is even worse. In a death bed nothing is scarier than to be haunted by the ghost of regrets and indecision over the things we could have done but chose not to and the sad part is we can never relive those times.
The great what if…
We all have our respective faith, but what if our natural life cycle ends in death? Imagine the failing light and the cold dark silence meeting you. Shouldn’t that thought be enough reason to make every minute of our life count? Make no mistake; I believe in God and the hereafter, but squandering our time on earth is also not good way to go.
No, it’s not just another day! Strike the iron while it’s hot.
“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make us of.”
—Charles Richards
Time is an abstract concept; an illusion that governs the structure of our everyday activities. It flows incessantly, unperturbed by intervention of mankind, it is etched upon our DNAs which subjects us to aging and mortality. We often put off things in the belief that there will always be tomorrow. We often ignore the warning signs and before we know it, the failure of our biological system will tell us why procrastination is the mother of regrets. We can go on blaming our circumstance, but rarely does it occur to many of us that circumstances do not bury us, it is we who bury our very selves in needless and unfixed circumstances.
The day should start with us being grateful—grateful that we are still here and we can’t take it for granted. While it’s not right to deprive our bodies of rest, it not a reason for us to overdo it either. We must go out here and live as much as we can. If you are not living the life you love, it’s about time to explore your options. Sustaining life is not enough. You can’t go on a drive in the countryside just to keep worrying about your car. You embark on a journey to relish the beauty of life and not to make yourself look good enjoying it and worse we sometimes punish ourselves by doing so.
In our blind pursuit of artificial happiness, we fail to recognize that time is a currency we can’t waste. We misuse our hard-earned money to purchase what we conceive as happiness. We can’t devote our lives to merely paying bills and fighting with our spouse so we could afford an attractive lifestyle. We spend hours making a living ironically to support our debilitating habits and irrational indulgences. It’s no secret and there is no need for a clairvoyant either to predict that some have a grim future waiting for them as reflected in their habits; meaning, they know exactly how the end will turn out, they’re just either too hypocritical or too proud to admit it.
My wife used to work in an (ER) emergency room, when I drop by to pick her up I sometimes overhear that despite the cries of despair and wailing sound of a defibrillator, I have yet to hear someone say, “he is dying and the suit he is wearing is absolutely horrible.”
When we’re gone, nobody will talk about how many Louis Vuitton bags you’ve owned, or what kind of Jordans you wore, or how many cars you’ve sold in a month, or how big your house is—nobody. What will matter in the end is who you are to people and the moments you’ve shared with them and not how much you had in life. All the riches in the world can’t buy you a minute. Rich or poor, we only have 24 hours in a day.
Life is too short, but long enough to pursue our dreams.
…to be continued
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