Know Your Finale

How does knowing how we plan on leaving this world help us with preparing for the afterlife? Believe it or not, it helps straighten our current path in life and helps to prevent us from veering from it. Imagine going on a thousand-mile journey by foot to a specific destination. If we didn't have the destination in mind, how often would we get side-tracked? Is it possible that you'd get so distracted that you never make it to your destination?

Knowing our finale is analogous to the long journey above, except this journey can be even longer. It's imperative to maintain focus on our destination because the world is full of distractions. If we're to optimize our chances of getting into the highest realm possible in the afterlife, we must never lose sight of our finale.

Now suppose you are allowed to live a long life. How do you want to be remembered? After decades of living life, what legacy will you be leaving behind? What is the meaning of life? What is your purpose for life? If you haven't given that much thought, perhaps you can try reading Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning. Mr. Frankl's survival of the four concentration camps is truly fascinating. His life experiences, particularly the ones from the camps, helped him to further his development on logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy based on the premise that finding meaning is the strongest motivator in an individual.

Once you've determined--partially or fully--the meaning of your life, let's focus on that. Do the activities required to create meaning for your life help you prepare you for heaven? In other words, do they build or repair relationships, reinforce the strengthening of virtues, and/or promote peace and justice? If not, you should reconsider.

Suppose they do satisfy the above conditions. Now imagine how your life will play out as you willfully pursue all the activities that give your life meaning until you die. I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, and have found the first three habits to be highly essential for self-improvement. They are 1) Be proactive, 2) Begin with the end in mind, and 3) Put first things first. Habit 2) helps us to align and realign each day, month, or year to coincide with our ultimate goal(s). Habits 4), 5), and 6) revolve around the "Middle Way," which is a Buddhist teaching. If I'm not mistaken, Stephen Covey likely took Habit 2) from Siddhartha Gautama, the first Buddha, since his book borrowed other Buddhist principles, such as the middle way and synergy.

The Buddha recognized that death is a great teacher. We can learn from death also. Everyone must die/pass on, so we must face such a reality and learn from it. History teaches us that if we live a highly impactful life, our legacies can carry on for millennia after our death. If you align each day to coincide with your ultimate goal, living each of those days to the fullest, what legacy would you leave behind? Would you be content, if you could watch down from heaven?