If we really believed

something i read somewhere, not so long ago, went along the lines of: “…every man is immortal until they die.” It got me thinking about how we generally tend to regard ourselves as invincible. then not so long after that, i came across this piece of graffiti: “…if you really believed that you were going to die, would you change the way you live?” it seems the writers of these two pieces confirm the common perception that we live life “as if”.

We live “as if” we got all the time in the world. We live “as if” the single most important thing we could be doing right now is our job. We live “as if” the single most relevant ambition we could have is to secure an easy retirement. We live “as if” we’re going to live forever.

Yet we all know that we, or someone we love, will die, but we don’t really seem to believe that. Or we choose not to. Either way, the choices we make reflect what we believe. And then there’s the “what we’d like to believe”. And we lament over our inability to live a life based on what we would like to believe, disarming ourselves with a battery of excuses and justifications about the ways of society and the lack of choices we are presented with. No one said anything about it being a free ride, so if you believe that, well, you’ll live according to that.

Truth is, we are all but one breath away from losing this life. We are starkly reminded by the death of a cousin. And while we evaluate our own lives and confirm our commitments to live like every day is a gift from God Almighty, we strive to manifest that insight, applying it to every decision we make.