Welcome, cbell39! When I realized I was an atheist, it was like my manacles had been unlocked. Christians and Muslims are taught the whole point of their entire life is to qualify for a pleasant eternity after they're dead and avoid an unpleasant one. It's literally living for your death.
Being alive is like winning the lottery. For each one of us there are millions of possible people who could have been but aren't. Each of us is the heir to life that goes back unbroken to the first thing that ever lived, and we get to be one of those very, very few possible people to actually exist to experience a life made of choices in an intricate and vast universe. Our lives are stories with endings, but stories without endings are incomplete. We each have a chance to make our lives a story worth listening to. What you do won't matter in a billion years, but it doesn't matter that it won't then, it matters that it does now, to you and those who love you.
'cbell99 was generous, kind, and loved by those who knew her' is not a bad epitaph, and not that hard to achieve.
Being alive is like winning the lottery. For each one of us there are millions of possible people who could have been but aren't. Each of us is the heir to life that goes back unbroken to the first thing that ever lived, and we get to be one of those very, very few possible people to actually exist to experience a life made of choices in an intricate and vast universe. Our lives are stories with endings, but stories without endings are incomplete. We each have a chance to make our lives a story worth listening to. What you do won't matter in a billion years, but it doesn't matter that it won't then, it matters that it does now, to you and those who love you.
'cbell99 was generous, kind, and loved by those who knew her' is not a bad epitaph, and not that hard to achieve.
