You spend your life as though it were currency, and on what?  Work?  Without living?  How’s that going for you?  Happy?  I mean really happy?

Besides, what’s the point?

Ah, the promise of heaven, yes?  So your days languish in hopes of tomorrow while you proffer your soul today, a handout in trade for something you might never receive.  I hope the wait is worth it.

Or is it retirement?  Then will you live?  With brittle bones and weak muscles and waning strength of mind, perhaps when you’re seventy or seventy-five…  Is that when you think you’ll truly worship at the altar of experience?

I’d rather live.  Right here, right now.  I’m on Earth inhabiting the only life I’ll ever get, experiencing the only sensations I’ll ever have.  Everything else is smoke and mirrors, empty promises of days to come.  I’m worth more than that.

Why would I waste my time waiting for something that might never come, whether that be tomorrow, or heaven, or a chance to enjoy the world for which I’ve slaved away the most meaningful years of my life?  Again, why?

I pity those who diligently toil hoping for the big payoff later.  That’s just so sad.

So let me catch a little sun now and then—sunburns be damned.  Let me say something stupid or meaningless without worrying what others think.  Let me set one foot in front of the other on paths known and unknown.  Let me carry my own weight through forests and over mountains, walk along streams, wiggle my toes in the sand of shores, and feast my eyes on the wondrous beauty this world offers.

I’ll stroll with head held high and a sure step beneath me.

You see, I don’t need the things.  Not anymore.  I used to think that was the point.  Not anymore.

Nothing is more important than now.  It’s the only time I have.  It’s the only life I can live.