The Future

One's future changes with time.  When one is old enough to anticipate, assuming that life's circumstances are good, the future can be full of wonder.  Everything that is new is exciting.  At some point, wonders become possibilities and the potential to realized them seem limitless.

As the years go by, when trials are met by failures, realities set in, so instead of having lofty goals such as conquering the world and changing it, one is changed by defeats. Making a living, raising a family then become the focus in life.  The future is no further than the daily routines, the typical work schedule and the next vacation.

When the children have left home, the future is mainly the passage of time, day after day, vacation after vacation, as one seasons folds into another, as the years seem to go by quicker and quicker.  This lasts a while until one's parents are no longer able to care fully for themselves, needing attention and care.  They are a preview of one's future that one does not care to plan for or think about until it becomes real.  By the time it does, one's future may not be so carefree, like the future of one's younger years.

At death's door, if one's mind is still functional, what kind of future can one imagine, if any?  Is the end of life merely the shutting of eyes and the cessation of breath with nothing to look forward to?  Can life be so meaningless, born to dream in the younger years, to cope with realities during middle-age [1] and to lie on a death bed accepting the inevitable without a scintilla of hope?

If life ends without no hope and no future, which means that all hopes are only as long as one's lifespan, then what is the purpose of having hopes?  One may as well let the present be.  To think that one's hope can be transferred to the next generation is egoistical and delusional.  Nobody wants to carry out the hopes of the dead for the living have their own hopes to realize.

Misery, on the other hand, can be successfully transferred, even if the next generation does not want it.  The reason for anyone to want to keep a hope alive is to nullify the misery attached it. [2] Therefore, any hope that is free of misery is a hope that will expire. 

Expired hopes ends in nothingness and nothingness in the end makes whatever precedes it meaningless, aside from assets that are bequeathed and/or distributed in accordance with the terms of a trust. [3]  Since a life precedes the distribution of assets at death, and hope dies even with a living trust [4], life therefore has no meaning except for those who believe in a future after death.

Having a future after death means existence continues in the afterlife.  With an afterlife, hope can be had on the death bed.  The only hope on the death bed that has meaning is the hope for Heaven.  Heaven which is eternal gives meaning to life which is not.  The hope of Heaven is for man to willingly choose God over Satan.  If man does not hope for Heaven, his alternative is Hell.  There is no hope in Hell.  Hell is a wasteland full of restless miserable souls that refused to be saved.  It is an eternity of hopelessness and it is always in the present without a future.  It does have a past of eternal regret of having lived a life of irrelevance.  That itself is hellish.  

[1] Some cope by wanting to own the world while others by escaping it, and the rest by relying on a variety of distractions.

[2] As an example, keeping the hope of Heaven alive is to negate the misery of Hell.

[3] Assets of the deceased have meaning because the beneficiaries can use the money.  Not too many people find no meaning in money, even money with conditions. Conditions can be attached to assets and set forth in a living trust if one wants to dictate the terms from the grave, but how is the deceased going to enforce those terms (hopes) to the letter?  In short, hopes die even with a living trust.  No hope, no need for a future.

[4] Ibid.