Teach Your Children Well

We teach our children about death, but what do we teach ourselves about it? That it’s final. That it’s irreversible. That it happens to us all.

Mainly, perhaps, we communicate our fears surrounding it, for the fear of our ending in time is the ultimate fear. Many other fears are forms of this one terror dressed up as something else. A wise man once said that though death destroys us, the idea of death saves us. Knowing that I shall die, that I will lose everything I’ve earned and own and everyone I know and love, how do I choose to live today? Being human, with time still left, I have the ability to choose. Being human in time provides a unique opportunity to change my karma, or, if you will, my destiny. This day is the universe’s gift to me. What I do with the 24 hours of my life I’ll exchange for the day is my gift back to the universe. It’s my gift to myself.

Death is simply limited time. This forces us to choose, for we can have almost anything, but not everything. And by every choice made, we negate every other choice we could have made. And so, as the day of our death draws near, the path narrows. This seems at first a cruel twist, yet in the final analysis it’s our greatest gift, our opportunity to show the world what we value. Through the limits of time imposed by our birthday and our death day, we show ourselves and others what’s really important to us, not what we say is.  The constraints of time offer us our chance to choose. Death is, therefore, a great gift. For through its ultimate arrival at the finish line of our lives, we decide what we treasure. And what we value we pay the price for in the currency of time; with our moments, our hours, our days and years; with our human capacity to choose how to spend time. We are children in a playground with recess about to run out. A bell will be rung, a whistle blown. And we’ll be called in, one at a time.

The call that our lives are nearing their ends really allows us to choose more powerfully, to act out of what we value. Time is like money, except you can’t store it. You can’t save it. You have to spend the same amount of it each day. How will you spend today? What will you buy with it?

Time is a book and on its page you write. The book has been written up through the pagw called yesterday and can be rewritten no more. We can’t edit what’s gone before in the hope for a better past. For the past is no more. All we can do is write the story from this page forward and make any changes choice and time have left us.

© 2022 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within