Life Expectancy is not Life
What is the value in living to 100 if 60 years are spent spiritually dead?
In the world today, there are many millions of people living solely for the next life-extending medicine to be approved. They hope that if they can hold on another five years, the medicine could maintain their life another ten.
Perhaps it is out of a fear of what comes after. Perhaps the concept of a forty-year retirement attempts to replace what Heaven used to be. The modern man wishes for eternal rest in his own bedroom, not above.
Our entire social and economic structure is built out of a narrative of progress. One of the foremost measures of such progress is the length of life.
It should be said that a long life is not a bad thing in and of itself. But how is a long life achieved today? Rarely from health, a good spirit, and a desire to care for the next generations. But rather from drugs, operations, and stubborn spite.
There are ancient men who died young. But they died for an ideal of something greater. Did they live more or less than the man who reluctantly descends slowly to his grave?
There are short lives that end with meaning. There are long lives that are true and good.
Must we only measure health by the number of moons and suns passed overhead? Is health borne of a fear of the grave, or a love of our potential in this world?
A healthy life may be long, but years are not the final goal. Only by living with vitality, strength and fire can life be true. With these values at the core, a single day is worth eighty years
