After Life

Last night on the plane back to AR, I listened to the Phedippidations (http://www.steverunner.blogspot.com/) podcast titled "Life Should Be Long Enough."  The main idea of the podcast was that regular runners tend to be less afflicted with age associated disabilities than non-runners over time.  They are able to stay active longer in their lives, and spend less time at the end of their lives in a disabled condition.  But Steve took it one step farther and segued into the idea of an "afterlife."  I interpreted it to be a "so what - it's not important that you are living a longer life if you aren't doing anything with it" idea.  He played a portion of a debate that included Rabbi Schmuley Boteach (no I don't know who he is, but it was fascinating to listen to).  Link to entire debate:  http://www.iamplify.com/store/product_details/Rabbi-Shmuley-Boteach/Afterlife-Debate-With-Christopher-Hitchens/product_id/8621.  The debate focused on whether an afterlife exists. 

The rabbi used a different definition for afterlife  than I had ever considered.  He didn't come at it from a religious or spiritual perspective, but rather from the idea that our afterlife is what we leave here on earth.  Not literally, as in physical possessions, but our memories, our works, the things we accomplished in our lives that made the world a better place.

I'm not a religious person these days.  Organized religion doesn't hold much appeal for me, and the idea that there is one "true" religion to the exception of all other religions and their members just irritates me.  But the idea of an afterlife in the present, one that doesn't require suspension of belief and strange mental contortions was oddly comforting.  Obviously, this is no different from the concept of a legacy - I get that.  But I took his point to mean that instead of focusing on an afterlife of pearly gates and eternal reward, we should instead focus on the here and now, concentrate on what we can do while we are living on this earth, and deal with the afterdeath, after death.  That, to me, makes complete sense.  No one knows what happens when you die.  There's not a lot of point in trying to consider it, nor in trying to guess what happens; we're all going to find out sooner or later, and there's really not much point in thinking about it now.  But the idea of doing what we can while we still walk the earth?  We can do something about that.  We can take steps to improve our families, our communities, our lives, our world.  These are things we have some modicum of control over and maybe we should take advantage of that.

I'm totally guilty of doing exactly the opposite of what I just wrote, and that can cause lot of internal tension.  One of the things on my list of "what I want to accomplish in my life" includes getting intimately involved in something that will leave the world a better place, something I believe in and sincerely care about.  I have yet to identify what that is, and that's really no excuse.  I have some ideas floating around about what I want to get involved in, but the timing isn't right yet, for various reasons.  But there will come a point when the time is right and the activity is right, and I'm looking forward to that.  In the meantime, I'm trying to raise my kids to be good decent adults, I try to be a decent person, and I'm trying to pay more attention to the small things - holding doors open, picking up things that fall, going out of your way to help just a little.  It helps make my day a little brighter, too.