Just finished Entry #11 -- Running Out Of Time
He makes some fun comparisons about our need for faith in the future:
"...I think there is way too much evidence that the past and the present exist, even in the present and unhealthy condition. What's startling, though, is that even the most skeptical empiricist would accept and even assume the existence of the future. The future doesn't exist. It's not there yet. It's being created at this very moment. Without any proof, we believe in the future..."
He humorously (intentional or not) talks about how we have precedent (the past), but how stepping into the future is an act of faith and hope.
"...And while you may not believe in anything overtly religious, it takes faith to believe in the future."
He then presses the buttons he's been pushing a lot lately (good buttons), like the questions:
"Why are we most alive when we are pursuing a great dream?
Why is it that we need a reason to live?
Why do we need to feel that we are in some way unique?
Why is it that when we conclude our lives don't matter, we lose the will to live?"
I'm listening to the new Hanson album right now. Some people might assume from that statement that I'm losing my will to live. Ha ha ha. He talks about the brevity of life. In hindsight, it's like a "blink and you're done" kind of thing. He brings up a foreign film he likes -- Chungking Express. A character in it believes that everything has an expiration date, just like milk or something ... including faith, hope and love. We have a Bible verse that says something different (something about those three things remaining), but it's easy to see why someone would conclude that even something like love had an expiration date. Most of us have seen love blow up in our face (or at least have seen it happen to someone we know).
He brings up another guy, who told people "It's all about the dash." He was talking about the dash on your tombstone. Birthdate - Death. That dash is what's in between. That's the important stuff -- what we are doing with this life we've been given. That's a reall good question to motivate us to do something good: "What are we doing with the life we've been given?"
McManus' story about this guy who talked about the dash was sad, though. Chip Anderson. He died fighting cancer. He wanted to live. He had a will to live, but he died. McManus ends the entry with these two sentences:
"He was full of life until his last breath, and we all have a last breath. We're all born with an expiration date."
P.S. I just popped that Emerson Lake & Palmer CD, Brain Salad Surgery, into my computer to rip with iTunes. As I did so, I noticed my iTunes was downloading something. It's the new episode of the HM Magazine Podcast! Hooray!