Waiting for Something a Whole Lot Better

There is a very popular idea that we should "live life to its fullest". Though I practised this in a very tame form for awhile, I was never really into it. I watched friends try to do it and was amazed to see how shallow their experiences were, and how little they satisfied them.

One of my friends was almost illegally handsome. Women nearly fainted when they met him. One day he introduced me to his girlfriend. She was shy and hid in his shadow. She had with her a portfolio of sketches, cartoons really. Reluctantly, she showed them to me. I was taken by a set that illustrated figures contemplating their navels. One was of a perplexed individual with about six navels. It said "confused". I cracked up at that one and told her, "That's me!" She basked in the attention.

A little later, when I was away, I found that she had come to my place alone to see me. My friend, who later married her, would have been upset. I wondered, why would the girlfriend of such an impressive man come to see me? Later, I think I figured it out. I had noticed her and her work, and we had laughed together. The focus had been on her.

My friend who believed in a thrill a minute, traveled the world, rode the fastest motorcycles in the world (Vincent Black Shadows and Lightnings), made delayed parachute drops, and sky dived, and became an airline pilot, was as shallow as a birdbath. He was a sensualist and atheist. He needed the thrills to feel alive and had zero hope for life after death. He regarded my faith as an aberration, something I would "get over".

While dating his wife to be, he found she had a former husband who stalked her. My friend began carrying a derringer, and a bullet slide on his belt. He jumped if anyone touched him from behind. Not too long after they married, his neglected wife divorced him. He is dead now--by my standards, never having lived. Without a belief in God, and no hope for the future, his life was meaningless.

I learned to become satisfied with my belief in what comes after death, or the rapture. The good things lie ahead.