Recently I watched a movie depicting a dystrophic future. A line from one of the protagonists stuck with me:

There are no happy endings any more.

Ultimately, there never is, and never will be, a happy end. In the end, we will die. It has always been that way. There never were truly happy endings. People don’t like this, and they are afraid. That explains why so many people become religious: they crave a happy ending. But deep down they know perfectly well that there isn’t going to be one.

And so they play make-believe. They waste inordinate amounts of time preparing for the end. And doing that, they become miserable and miss the great time they could have had. When you obsess with your end, you quickly stop living and start dying. That’s the real tragedy. We all know that the end will come – but it will be neither happy nor sad. It will simply be the end.

Stop focusing on the end. Enjoy the brief time we have here before the end.

Live.