If I were...

If I were a ghost, I wouldn’t want to spend my time wandering around the Earth for eternity. The objective would be to cross over to the other side. I would do everything with the intention of getting to the other side. The phase that I am in would be temporary and thus transitional. I would not be seeking to make my stay on Earth as a ghost more comfortable by (maybe) finding a nice spot to haunt.

If I were shipwrecked and alone on an island, my goal would be to try to return home, to where my family and friends are. While gathering wood to try to build a watercraft to escape the island, I also decide to build a shelter for myself. I am such a perfectionist that I decide to build a fanciful shelter. Day by day, I seek out materials to better my temporary “home” and lose sight of the goal (to return home) and is totally distracted from building my watercraft (the way to get home). What I have done is to make my transitional phase (the island) more comfortable while losing sight of the ultimate goal. At the end of the day, if I finally get down to building my watercraft, I would have to leave my fanciful shelter behind and my hard work of building it would have meant nothing. I may however try my best to cling on to my life at the island and try to postpone leaving the island. But any logical man would tell me that that would be silly since I would feel incomplete without your family and friends.

Now, my life on Earth as a person is temporary as well. The goal is to have eternal happiness. I too should focus solely on that. The way is love. Love is such a beautiful gift bestowed upon us. We seldom ask others “Why are you happy?” Perhaps the answer to that is love. It is such a wonderful thing to love others (family, friends, acquaintances and strangers) and even a greater thing to see them sincerely smile because of your action. It rewards with such a wonderful feeling yet it remains challenging. I get distracted from my goal (and loving others) by trying to seek other self-interests leading away from my original goal. These distractions include an obsession with academics, money, career, leisure and decadent lifestyles. Let’s say I have a fancy career, lots of cash, spouse and kids. At the end of the day, my goal was probably to build a comfortable place for a transitional phase. If my goal was to feel at home on Earth, I would have accomplished it and I would try to cling on to my dear temporary life and eventually will have to give it up in dying. Wouldn’t that be silly? Why the attachment to the temporal? Set your sights on the ultimate goal.