The Purpose of Your Life [Poem]

The Purpose of Your Life 

The purpose of your life 

cannot

simply cannot 

be survival. 

Why? 

Because your quest for survival is doomed. 

No matter what, you are going to die. 

These things may or may not be real: 

Financial Security 

Everlasting Happiness 

True Contentment

But you can be certain that death is real. 

Overwhelmingly real. 

Self-preservation

(the most common of pursuits)

will always end in 

failure. 

Everyone and everything

No matter how much we cherish 

No matter how much we enshrine

No matter how much we fight

will be

hurt

humiliated

before

perishing

and then being

forgotten. 

But I know that even though no one has ever survived

I know that people have been good. 

That goal

is more achievable:

Even though they died as anyone else, 

they still bestowed

soul-smiles

heart-healings 

tenderness-times

and that is enough. 

That goal

is more permanent: 

Every act of goodness is eternal.

Do you not feel the ripples of loving-kindness, 

flowing across time to wash over you?

When death comes to devour you, 

fight him unrelenting tenacity,

just to reveal your strength of character,

so that he can know what measure of man he is taking today:
Not someone whose body outlived their soul, 

but someone who loved life and will miss it and be missed by it. 

Someone who knew that the only true defeat is giving up, 

and the only true victory is to keep fighting, 

someone who audaciously laughs at death, whispering:
“I won!”