Hey Friend,
I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and ran into this post from a new group I’d joined…
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE? < – In big letters with attention catching colors jumped off the page and punched me in the eyeballs?
Immediately my brain and heart punched back and asked…
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE LIVE? (a much better question in my humble opinion)
Life after death is a question that has occupied PLENTY of my brain, soul and study resources over the years.
Through all of my studies and contemplation I’ve learned that if you ask that question to a million different people, you’ll likely get a million different answers.
Eventually, each of us just has to decide what the answer to that question really means and how useful (or not) it might be to us during our lives here on earth.
For me, I’m fine with ‘I don’t know‘ or even, ‘I believe and hope and at the same time remain always open to further light and knowledge.‘
Yes I’ve had experiences that lean me to the positive side of the answer to this question, and that’s why I have faith.
Faith is not knowledge though, regardless of how many people try to interchange the 2.
There is a difference.
What I do know, is that I’m alive right now, here on this planet.
I know that there are people around me.
I know that striving to do good to myself and others seems to bring good results in the here and now and it seems to logically follow that if there is life after death, those good results would likely continue there as well.
I resonate with Benjamin Franklin’s quote that “The most acceptable service to God is doing good to man.’
It seems to me that if
I’ve concluded to do my best to strive to make the best of myself here, both for myself and others…
Doing my best for me and others brings happiness, fulfillment and a sense of contribution, purpose and meaning…
Doing my best here has a high probability of carrying over into the next life (as Ben Franklin also said… ‘God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.“)
Then, all the various answers, theories, guesses, and speculations relating to all the specific details following the ‘what happens when we die question‘ make little difference to my choice of a philosophy for living.
Perhaps a few better questions might be…
What happens when we really live?
What are virtues?
What are vices?
How am I going to live in such a way where I can be happy with myself, not just on the last day, but on each and every day I have the gift of walking this planet with my fellow beings?
Anyway Friend, I know this was a bit of a random email but the truth is, it relates much more to business than most people would imagine.
So many people, spend so much time, thinking about the afterlife, and how other people should live - that it leaves little time left to think and act in ways that fully support how YOU THINK YOU SHOULD LIVE.
If this email has helped, in any way shape or form, to re-direct some of those efforts to the here and now, I'm thankful.
We all have more journeys in our futures, but putting too much time into thinking about them, does tend to detract from the task at hand, which is the journey we're on right now.
All the best,
Paul
