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Rebecca Rodriguez
Eng 113
Professor Morris
8 October 2017
Everything is Temporary

I have always had this thought process of, This is temporary. Everything is temporary.

Living here is temporary. This job is temporary. These feelings are temporary, the reason being

is that having my husband in the Marine Corps. We are used to packing up our home every three

to five years to a new location. It was easy to for me to realize not to get to attached to where we

were living. What made it difficult, however, is moving away from the friendships I gained while

we resided on a military installation. The easy part for me was the moving process but the hard

part was the leaving my friends behind. I feel that everyone in this life has a purpose and that we

all meet each other under certain situations. We are here for a greater purpose and at a much

higher meaning. Even though I have this thought process that everything is temporary, I also

have this thought process of everything and everyone has a meaning. I feel thats what the book

Ecclesiastes was pointing out in verses 11:13-14, 13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole

matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God

shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it

be evil. We, as Christians, should obtain our meaning in this day before our time is up. Instead

of worrying how we are living, we should be enjoying our time and with our loved ones as well

as thinking about how we are going to spend eternity.

It seems that carpe diem, or better known as seize the day, does come into play for us

Christians. A good majority of us were taught, especially from Dead Poets Society starring the

late Robin Williams, to seize the day and not to take a day for granted. But what the Dead Poets
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Society fails to mention is that while we should not take a day for granted, we should also think

about how our time on earth will be spent for eternity when we meet the Lord. In the book of

Revelation verse 21:2, the disciple John states how he saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,

coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Here, John

wants us to see that God has been truly watching over us since we are his creations and we

created amazing things such as cities. Our lives have a deeper meaning then seizing the day. We

should be thinking about how to prepare ourselves when we go to heaven versus worrying about

how to live out our lives day in and day out.

Albert Camus may have went about telling his readers to not fall under societys

spectrum of following the rules a bit aggressively, but he did make a fair point. He was telling us

that following the rule was not going to get us anywhere; we should be answering to some form

of higher power. He did not want us to continue to question our way of life. He wanted us,

instead, to think what else can I do in this life that will matter? In the beginning of his chapter of

Absurd Freedom, Camus explains how we must find our purpose in the world. What can a

meaning outside my condition mean to me? he asks his readers. We should be looking at a

much bigger picture on how we want to seize the day. Camus does continue to say that, And

what constitutes the basis of that conflict, of that break between the world and my mind, but the

awareness of it? If therefore I want to preserve it, I can through a constant awareness, ever

revived, ever alert. The point Camus says here is that we all have our own way of living, yes,

but we must find a way to find what that meaning is.

Life requires nothing more of the old man and he claims nothing more of it, says Sren

Kierkegaard in his first chapter of Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. Kierkegaard explains in

this chapter how repentance will allow us to be closer to God. He is not saying to do a quick
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prayer to God asking Him to forgive our sins, but a repentance that we must follow through and

live out his word and his will. This is one of the ways to prepare for eternity. We should not ask

life to give us what we desire. Those possessions will be meaningless compared to what God will

give us. If we can repent our lives to His will, all the things we worked for will not be worthless,

but may potentially be with us in heaven.

Lastly, Kierkegaard does say, Only the Eternal is always appropriate and always

present, is always true. Only applies to each human being, whatever his age may be. In other

words, it is not too late to turn to God. No matter how old we get, God will always be there. We

may turn away from him, but he will not turn away from us. God does wants us to seize the day

as well. There are ways for us to go about it. This life may be temporary, but it is worth the time.

Engaging in our daily routine may hold us back from what we are aiming, for the Eternal. To be

able to look back on what type of good we have done in this world and see it be taken to heaven,

is worth all the eternities.

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Works Cited

Marion, Gordon. Basic Writings of Existentialism. NY: Modern Library, 2004.

Holy Bible King James Version. Korea. Holman Bible Publishers, 2000.

Kierkegaard, Sren. Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. http://www.religion-

online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2523&C=2387