I was raised in the truth.
It was about six weeks past my fifth birthday when my mother was contacted by "Jehovah's People" and a few months short of my sixth when she got baptized a half year later. That was the summer of 1962.
Because of my experience with the truth from such an innocent age when thought patterns were first being formed, one of the tricks that was played on me – one of the lies that was passed along – is that some of those of my generation happened to be among the most fortunate of all of mankind since some of us would never die.
If I did my best; if I tried hard enough and did everything that was within my power to do; if I found favor with the Most High God, I might well be one of those who'd never taste death at all but live right through this world's End into a global Paradise. A remarkable possibility! One I lived with for the next thirty years.
With mixed feelings of sadness and gratitude, I finally woke up.
I'm almost ashamed to say it, but unlike most of the other billions of Earth's people, it took *me* a while—decades—for a very simple truth to finally sink in: I'm just like every other human who has ever lived. One inescapable fact of that reality is that one day, if I'm one of the lucky ones and live long enough I'm going to continue to age, my body is going to continue to lose it's vitality, I'm going to get sick and my body will have lost its ability to recover from it. Death, I discovered after nearly a lifetime, is not a matter of "if" but "when."
Having lived so long without even the thought of death crossing my mind, I will say that sometimes... sometimes... the thought of dying, of leaving this earth and going off into an endless oblivion — forever — scares me. I don't really care for the thought, to be honest, but I don't see how I can get around the eventuality. The older I get the more I think about it. More and more, the celebrities that I grew up watching on TV or in the movies who pass away (not to mention my own relatives and loved ones) are closer and closer to the age I am now. Some have even died younger than my 44 years.
It's not ALL bad, though. There are definite advantages to knowing the truth about my end.
One is that since I know that one day I'll be gone, what I determine is important, the choices I make, are usually centered around this newfound truth. In the past, what might have been important or seen as worthwhile all of a sudden becomes less so when viewed in the context of, uh... eternity. The trappings of success become way more trivial when compared with other, more meaningful things such as maintaining strong relationships, fair treatment of others or doing what little else I can to help humanity find higher ground. I also know that I will never find "greatness" in this life but I won't waste as much of my precious time, either.
It's not a depressing thought, so if you think that or that this is one dreary subject you'd rather avoid, you'd be wrong. Learning that the length of my life has a limit is kind of empowering, once I thought about it. Since I know it won't go on forever, I'm careful of how I use it.
One day I'll be somewhere—in a hospital room surrounded by loved ones if I'm lucky—and I'll think back on TODAY. Will I be happy about how I spent Friday, February 15, 2002, or will I have regrets?
No great message here. Just thinking out loud... on the Internet.