It's so cold in Alaska

It was late 2005. I was sleeping in my warm, comfy bed in an extremely reasonable sized apartment in Astoria, Queens.

My eyes shot open.

"I'm going to die and there's no afterlife".

This was probably the first time that I grasped the full enormity of that statement. Sure, I tacitly understood it somewhere deep down inside me, but I never really digested it fully.

But there it was; obvious like the Octuplet lady's disfiguring plastic surgeries. Sitting there like a moist pee stain on the crotch of a homeless man on Sunset Boulevard.

Life is one big ball of nothingness. Unimportance, insignificance, week-old rice pudding.

The next day, I went to my weekly poker game to discuss the previous evening's epiphany. After a chorus full of "yeah, duh, obviously!" (I was in NYC, after all), I began to realize; this was something I needed to accept.

Have you accepted it? Do you agree with me in the first place? Am I randomly inserting questions in the middle of a blog to give me time to think of what to write in the next paragraph?

Life is probably a long journey to answer a single question; "what is life's long journey?". While the accomplishment of personal and professional goals are nice...they are not the solution; just the distraction; things to keep us busy while avoiding thinking about the greater context (or lack thereof) of our own lives.

My 98 year old grandmother passed away last year; and perhaps she gave me the greatest insight into an answer for the seemingly unanswerable.

In our last conversations, she provided me (and herself) no great wisdom, just a lot of love. But there was one thing; she was ready. Ready to accept life's ultimate fate. There was no if ands or buts. It was her time.

Maybe that's what it's all about. Acceptance. Understanding. Welcoming.

I'm certainly not there, or even close to being there. I doubt most people are, but perhaps to truly live a full life, you must accept that it's over. Accept that your time has come.

So love a fuckload, live a fuckload and enjoy a fuckload, because it's a pretty good distraction.