Most games, you can win. They have an agreed upon end point. There’s a moment when everyone counts up their winnings, and we know with certainty how it all turned out. If we’re still in the mood to play, we can start a new game altogether.
Some have said that life itself is a game. But if that’s true, it’s a very strange one. It is an experience full of births, deaths, transitions, struggles, and adventures. But none of us can remember a beginning, and there’s no end in sight.
Even death isn’t the end of the story.
Maybe you understand this in a metaphysical sense. Or perhaps you’ve just made the commonsense observation that life carries on – year after year, century after century. Each one of us makes an impact, for better or worse, that is felt long after we have left the scene. We are destined to experience a certain kind of immortality.
Whether or not you subscribe to religion, it is an indisputable fact: Heaven and hell are real. You’ve experienced them.
Because everything you do matters.
We each have a choice to make each day, as we look down the never-ending road that stretches before us. What kind of impact do you want to make? Will you boldly blaze new trails? Faithfully cultivate the old paths? Will you walk fast, or slow? How will you treat your fellow travelers, and in what condition will you leave the road itself?
Everything you do matters.
What path are you on right now? Is this where you want to be?
Who will you walk with on this road without end?
“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”
-J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Fellowship of the Ring”