Why bother with life?

We all start life with nothing.  We work our tails off to carve our way through the jungles of life. We struggle and claw and fight for every gain. Some of us manage to build vast empires of metal and stone. With our sweat and blood we build a legacy of wealth and prosperity that will hold for generations. Others of us make barely enough to survive, much less save or prepare for the future. Most of the rest of us live somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

But, life is a zero sum game. We start with nothing and we return to the earth with nothing. Nobody gets out alive. And you can't take "it" with you.

So what's the point? If all of your hard work and time spent aren't going to matter once you are gone, why do it? Why put in the effort? Why struggle? Why don't you just coast along with no effort whatsoever and let the waters of life just buffet you around randomly from shore to shore. Why not just follow the routine, with no plan at all? You could just do the minimum that is required of you to get by and follow the same path day in and day out until your body crumbles to dust.

You could do that. In fact many people do. But all those people, they aren't really living. They are just getting by and none of them are truly happy with what they have. They are just cogs in the great machine turning the wheel of ages. Days blurred to weeks, weeks blurred to months and years. Years blurred to decades until Death comes to collect them.

All those countless lives are wasted because people fail to understand and accept that the whole point of life is now. From the time we are born until the time we die, we are blessed with billions of nows. Each one is an infinitesimally small fraction of forever. Each is unique and unlike any other now that will ever occur.

Every moment that passes brings with it a new now. And the only now that ever truly matters is the current one. The old ones are gone and the future ones have yet to come. In order to live a happy fulfilling life, you get to learn to get the most you possibly can out of the current now. We can learn from past nows and prepare for future nows, but the only one we can live is the current now.

And that my friends is why we bother, why we plan and struggle and work and play. Most of the struggle is to make our future nows more enjoyable. But as far as grading our life on the whole, it is not the one now at the end of our life that is important. It is all of them collectively. Some nows will be better than others as no life is ever perfect all the time. But from my point of view a life well lived is one with more good nows than bad.

It is a delicate balance, between planning for the future and enjoying the present, but as I see it, it is the only life worth living.