In the future, you will be dead.
Don’t take it personally, it will happen to all of us.
But, friends, listen! In the past, I had the opportunity to train as a hospital Chaplain. In the past I sat with those who were outliving the dying as they shared their stories and memories and recollections.
Sometimes those stories and memories and recollections were good.
Sometimes those stories and memories and recollections were not so good.
And so, friends, listen! If there is one thing that these experiences I had in the past can teach us about the future, it is this: There will be people who outlive us when we die.
And also, friends, listen!
If there is one more thing that
those experiences I had in the
past can teach us about the
future, it is this: we can
make choices now
about what stories
will be told about
us by those who
will outlive
us in the
future
will
be.
And so… If we decide, now, to love those who will outlive us then, we can change the future. If we care for them, and we hang out with them, and we eat and drink and laugh and spend our lives with them and truly truly truly love them… those things that we do now will positively affect the future then.
Or…
If we decide, now, to live only for ourselves and to not be considerate of those who will outlive us then, we also change the future.
Those things that we do now (or those things that we do not do now) will also affect the future then.
And, so…
Someday in the future,
you will be dead.
And someday in the future,
there will be those who outlive us.
The question we get to ask ourselves now, as we consider the future of those who will outlive us then, is this:
What kind of future will we give them? // JOE KOSKI
