From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
17 February
Some day you and I will be dead. In fact, some day everybody will be
dead. Maybe you don't believe in an afterlife, maybe with death it's all over.
And if THAT'S the case, you should be kicking yourself for not being more
single-minded about the credo of the materialist: "he who dies with the
most toys wins."
But if you do believe in an afterlife and it's all over - like, ALL over
- then we're all contemporaries: you and me, and the President of the United
States (all of them), and Emerson, and Leonardo, and Beethoven, and your
parents, and my parents, and Dante, and Socrates, and all our children, and our
grandchildren, and their grandchildren down to the fifth and sixth generations
and beyond – the whole gamut, all the way from Adam and Eve right to whoever’s
left at the Crack Of Doom. And we will know in an instant, in a twinkling of an
eye, how important is the advice offered by a great man: "Our greatest
responsibility in this life is to be good ancestors."
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