Perhaps the length of one’s life was not important—except in the way it is to so many living beings, desperate to avoid death. Perhaps, long or short, it mattered how one spent that time. Perhaps, though change was inevitable, the specifics of that change might be something one could manipulate. Perhaps one could not prevent change entirely, but one could try to guide events so that things would be better, if not for you, then for some future being or beings whose welfare mattered to you.
