How to Live Forever

by Johnny B. Truant

If my grandfather were watching now, he could point to those stories, to the people in those stories, and to those events he participated in and shaped, and he could say, "Look: I was here." Can you?

You are told that you must earn so that you can spend, and you must spend so that you can have some small thing to do that you enjoy. You are told that you can do that thing you enjoy for a while, but then you need to go back and earn so that you can spend. So that you can do that thing you enjoy.

If you do nothing, you are nothing. If someone could pluck you from existence and nothing would change, you've failed.

You've been given an assignment. Your assignment is to make as much positive turbulence in life and in time as you can before your clock runs out.

There's something about the symbols of tribute to those who sacrificed of themselves for others. You don't feel your emotions stir just for the dead. You feel them stir for the living. You look around and see men and women at salute, saying, This is what your actions mean to me.

At the end of a full, well-lived life, if you're moved by someone's death, it's not usually because you regret the absence of another person's physical presence. It's usually because you attach meaning to what that person did, and what they left behind.

The strongest emotions aren't usually for the dead, but for those who live on. You don't mourn just the departed. You mourn the connection between the departed and those who remain.

I don't want a viewing. Because the memories and impressions I leave behind are my legacy, I don't want anyone's last memory of me to be me lying in a box. Most people will look at a body at a funeral and say, "That's not the same person," and I tend to agree. I am not my body. Don't mourn my body. Don't dress and parade my body. I am my deeds. I am my actions. Address those, not the husk.

Let's not spend too much time bummed out by an assignment successfully completed and a deadline successfully met.

My point was that if you ever want to live the time you have to live, you need to get over yourself. All eyes are not on you. Nobody will care if you try something and fail.

you might as well stop asking for permission to do that thing you want to do. You might as well stop living in fear. You only get so long to live, and you are very small, so do it up. Live, already.