Living under the aspect of eternity

It is not often that I tend the low hanging fruits of the tree of philosophy. These include the tough existential questions like, "what is the point of life?", "is there an afterlife?", "is there a God?" and so on. I do not because I have done that already in extremis and I have developed few firm convictions on these matters. What's more, I don't think reason is capable of arriving at detailed trustworthy answers to these questions. But I will today mention a thought as a cat who has recently lost her mate sits on my lap. I will mention the thought which has time and again occurred to me in points of crisis and confusion about the purpose of life. That is that life should be lived as though each minute is a precious gift given from eternity to have for a moment. When I see the world this way I am brought to an awareness of the intrinsic good of all living beings that trouble to be. All living things whose origin and end are without time glimpse for a moment a brief sliver of eternity, in this time, in this hour. And we are all equal in this, brother. God knows no favorites here.

But I notice that when I am in that state of awareness, which is a solemn state of mind, that I suddenly see the world as it is and I am gladdened by it--or is it saddened by it--or perhaps it is at once gladdened and saddened by it. I find that I care about people more and about the quality of the interaction. For we are always free to improve the quality of our interactions and so to invest the world with the great gladness and compassion that we have for it when we see it as the precious, knotted, temporal fidgety fragment of reality that it is. Sub specie aeternitatis is how life, when properly understood, is to be lived.