Live Everyday As If It Were Our Last
With all the talk about the Rapture lately, one Christian sent me a message saying that he believes Harold Camping was wrong, but that the lesson we should learn is that we ought to live everyday as if it were our last. He says that this is the message Jesus was trying to send with Matthew 24:36. Personally, I think that is a terrible philosophy!
For starters, I dare anyone to try to really live as if everyday were our last. Let me just point out what that would entail. First, unless today is Friday (and at the time of this post, it is Thursday) you won’t get paid from your job until tomorrow. So if today is your last day, you better quit your job right now because it would be like working for free.
Along those same lines, max out those credit cards because you won’t live long enough for the collector to get you. If you are in school, quit! Knowledge is to be used for tomorrow. Learning stuff the day before your last day won’t really be all that useful unless you can pass that knowledge on pretty quick.
Don’t even think about kids. Pregnancies take about nine months more than you are willing to live your life by and then you have to spend years you don’t have raising a kid to live everyday as if it were his or her last. That kid isn’t going to get very far in life with that kind of philosophy. Living everyday as if it were our last is a pretty stupid idea.
Now, I understand the idea behind the philosophy. It is sort of like a poor man’s Heidegger. It’s the idea of living an “authentic” life. But wouldn’t the also very cliché “Carpe Diem” (Seize the Day) me more accurate?
Maybe it is just me, but I think when people say that we ought to live everyday as if it were our last, they are really just saying that they haven’t really thought about what they are saying and that they just like to say things that make them sound deep and cool without really thinking about what those things actually mean. It’s the mark of laziness, ignorance, and maybe even a touch of stupidity. Just say’n, I could be wrong.
Related articles
- The Ridiculousness of Harold Camping (dangeroustalk.net)
- In Defense of Harold Camping (dangeroustalk.net)
- Psychoanalysis meets Existentialism: Robert Stolorow on Trauma and Authenticity (psychologytoday.com)
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, conversation, responsibility, Self-Help, The Future
