Mortality is a gift.

Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, I was surrounded by people who genuinely believed they would live forever on Earth in a world transformed into a paradise. Because of that belief, I often heard adults, parents and grandparents, say things like, “I always wanted to do that. I’ll do it in paradise.”
“I always wanted to learn the violin. I’ll do it in paradise.”

Even as a child, I felt bad for them.

That idea isn’t a comfort. It’s a decaying life dressed up as eternal opportunity.

This is why mortality is a core, fundamental principle of my worldview. Life is beautiful and worth living not in spite of its finite nature, but because of it. Finitude is what gives life urgency, texture, and meaning.

It’s what drives mankind to create.
To paint on cave walls, carve names into stone, write music, and tell stories.
To build towers that reach toward the sky, to look out and ask questions of the stars.

To raise monuments, build cities, erect bridges and cathedrals, not because they will last forever, but because someone else might one day stand beneath them and remember.

To ask questions that offer no guarantees, and to build vast bodies of knowledge they will never reap, only to ensure that some future child of this world might.

To raise those children with unbounded and unapologetic love.
To choose vulnerability.
To allow ourselves to fall recklessly into commitment.

To allow ourselves to feel, because if you don’t today, you may never will.

A life without an end doesn’t deepen meaning. It decays it. Mortality doesn’t cheapen life. It makes it precious.