Well, believe it or not, I’m still sick. At least now the flu has moved from my head and nose to my lungs. So, all that’s left is a nasty but irregular cough. Doesn’t help that I’ve been working every day of course…

What a week this has been. A lot has happened, and it has given me plenty of food for thought. Which is good, because I was getting sick of chicken soup every day.

Mostly, a series of events have reminded me how important it is to set priorities in life. The world today has become so demanding that –

– wait. We know all that. Don’t you have anything better to write about than another Carpe Diem tripe? After all, the Dead Poets are dead.

Okay, I do. About a million years ago I found myself at my first University’s cafeteria, philosophising with someone who fancied himself a nihilist/antireligious/open thinker/cynic/atheist. And I love people like that because I was once one of them. And I remember saying that, for so many people, life is no more than mere survival: Work to make money to buy things to live to work to make money to live to work to…

“Must be depressing”, I said.

That’s when he got up and stormed away.

I love people like that.

But then I look around me and see it everywhere: Boredom. According to Baudelaire and his “Flowers of Evil”, it’s mankind’s worse monster. We live dull, grey, listless and comatose lives and we will try anything to resuscitate them, to bring back that little blip of a heartbeat. And when we do, when that line blips a little, we ‘ll do anything to keep it going.

And how many substitutes we find…

You don’t believe me? Look around you: Christmas is the best time to see it. Everyone complains about how expensive it has become, about how it has lost its meaning, about how stressful it is. And you know? They’re right. Then why do it?

It’s The Blip. It’s that substitute for life.

What’s yours?

People complain about their jobs, their parents, their kids, their spouses, their finances, their lovelives, their relationships, their holidays, their taxes, their education, their rights, their socialising, their cars, their houses, their friends, their colleagues, their bosses, their employees, their government, their LIFE. We’ve all been there.

But would we rather be dead?

Yes – you read that right.

It’s The Blip.

When I was about ten, I nearly lost my life. Then it happened again. And then again. The fourth time, I knew I had to learn something before it was too late. And I learned – I learned that we’ve got it all wrong. We think that happiness is something that the World owes us, when in reality, real happiness has nothing to do with this broken world.

Life, friends, is a gift. A gift from God. And if you don’t believe me, ask yourself why you find suicide wrong. Ask yourself why you’ve clawed and fought and crawled and bit your way here. Ask yourself why you hold it so dear, so close, so tight. Because it’s a gift, and if we learn anything this season, it’s that gifts are given for a purpose. And if life is a gift from God, then a life that has nothing to do with Him is as empty as a teen popstar’s head.

Seize the Day? Forget that. Seize your Life, and not in the cheesy self-help way. Burn that clutter that keeps you from breathing, the rubbish that this world is filled with. Am I preaching? Yeah, I am. Because in the end, when all the lights go off, you and I will have to weigh it all on the only scale that doesn’t lie. And I don’t know about you, but I want it to tip over my side. I want what I’ve done, thought, said, willed and achieved to mean something – if not to this blind world, then to God who put me and you and every single one of our moments here. As a gift, with a purpose and a reason.

Yeah, ok – burn me at the stake. That’s what it’s there for.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man’s all.
For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil. – Ecclesiastes 12:13-14