This article takes its name from the R&B artist Miguel’s song of the same name. It is a great song, but its real value isn’t in the musical quality. It’s in the meaning behind the lyrics. The song is all about questioning the true value of permanence and immortality.
You see, when you live forever, things have much less value. As the American author and teacher John Taylor Gatto so eloquently puts it:
“The only thing that gives our time on earth any deep significance is that none of this will last. Only that temporality gives our relationships any urgency.
If you were indestructible, what a curse!
How could it possibly matter whether you did anything today or next year or in the next hundred years, learned anything, loved anybody?
There would always be time for anything and everything.
What would be the big deal about anything?”
The real value of life comes from its impermanence, its transience, its fleeting nature. A relationship is so vivid and powerful because we know it won’t last forever. Sure a good one may last a lifetime, but that’s not forever. We know that both us and our friend/relative/lover will leave one day. That’s what makes each day so much more powerful. That’s why we get up and hug our kids and kiss our spouses. Because we know that one day they won’t be there…or we won’t. Your kids will grow up and leave the house. Your parents will grow old and pass on. Your friends will start their own families and move away.
That’s the sad truth of life. But it’s also a good thing. When you know you won’t be able to see your friend everyday, then each moment you spend with him or her becomes that much more powerful and important. When you know that your kids will grow up, you will cherish each day you have them in your house. Life is fleeting, but that’s what makes it so great.
How much fun would a party be if it lasted forever? How much pleasure would we derive from our work if we never had to leave the office? How great would our food taste if we never had to leave the dinner table? There is so much truth in the phrase, “short, but sweet.” That’s what life is. Short, but sweet.
Where’s the fun in forever? The real fun is in the here and now. In the fleeting, transitory, ever-passing present moment. Not in forever.