Jewish Atheist

“The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.”

Traditional IBM motto

This year, for third time in memory, I had no trouble mentally switching calendar years. I haven’t mis-dated a single check.

This is a good sign: the mind is still sharp. And also not so good: a sign of heightened awareness of time passing, of the fourth quarter of my life ticking away.

I’ve become very choosy about how I spend my time. A lot of people like to spend tons of time in transit, seeing the necessary 1,000 places before they die. Good for them, but it’s not me. As Ram Dass says, wherever you go, there you are.

Let the travelers travel! I’m convinced that if you live YOUR life, you’ll have a lot less fear of death. Perhaps you’ve lived other people’s versions of your life – out of a desire to please…or because you didn’t have a clue…or because you were subjected to relentless programming and had little or no choice.

If so, the not-thinking can be an easier path, but (i) it can be very difficult to maintain; and (ii) especially on the subjects of death, the soul and the afterlife, you’ve got to not-think until the very moment the lights go out. Any last-minute doubts…and death will be much more frightening than to the practiced nonbeliever.

Other escapes

Religion is by no means the only escape. Corporations and organizations of all kinds, especially political and military ones, are ready with answers to life’s questions – or ways to use up YOUR precious hours and days — in exchange for unthinking loyalty.

Some people at one company I worked at…actually spent the majority of their waking hours trying to get people to eat more Jell-O. Others spend their waking lives getting folks to drink more Crystal Lite. There are people like that, each devoting his/her life to one of the countless consumer products you can name. That’s capitalism.

In a far more serious vein, my heart weeps when I see American soldiers, so dedicated to – and suffering so horribly because of — the “mission” made up by vain, gutless politicians who couldn’t find time to serve. I also mourn the young men and women committing suicide and murder in the name of some psychotic dream.

In these cases, I do make value judgments: what a waste. A great line from one of my correspondents: Violence doesn’t decide who’s right – only who’s left.

How are you going to look back on your life? The answer lies in how authentically you live each day. We’ve all heard the joke about how one never wishes, on one’s deathbed, that one had spent more time at the office.

Your life

Your life is yours alone to live. It’s the only one you’ll ever have. Same for your fellow human beings.

We must choose. Passivity is a choice. Religious zealotry and competitive eating are also choices about how to spend your life. But the main thing is: You don’t want to get to middle age and realize it’s all been done according to someone else’s plan, and you just went along.

Everyone, as the Dalai Lama says, must find his/her own answers. Unlike politicians and clerics, I would never pretend to tell anyone how to live. I’m a Secular Humanist and a libertarian. I don’t believe Jesus existed, but I am on the side of Christians who want to home-school their kids; they should have the freedom to do so.

Similarly, Americans should also have the right to keep their kids out of the public school system, so that they’re not taught by government employees, not indoctrinated in the publicly approved versions of religion and American history.

Can’t we all just get along, live and let live in ’10 and beyond? Didn’t Jesus and Mohammed want that? If they wanted people to kill in their names, then they were evil and psychotic and should be rejected. The same goes for the people who commit horrible acts of religious violence.

Humanity can do better. Let’s all try to do better in ’10. Somebody pass this post on to a fundamentalist Islamic website.

I’m just suggesting, as a New Year’s resolution, something like “Since this year is the only 2010 I will ever have, I resolve to be aware of how much of each precious day is spent living according to someone else’s plan, someone else’s reality, someone else’s values, and how much of it is devoted to mine.” (This isn’t a plea for selfishness, but for integrity; your values should, of course, include service to others.)

That’s just the basic, generic version. You can rewrite to suit your circumstances. If you don’t yet know who you are or what you think, this year would be a great time to work on figuring it out. It’s a long process.

Tempus fugit! Carpe diem!

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Alan M. Perlman is a secular humanist speaker and author — most recently, of An Atheist Reads the Torah: Secular Humanistic Perspectives on the Five Books of Moses. For information, go to www.trafford.com/06-0056. He is the founder of Positive Humanists International/PHI©.