The end of the world seems to be as insignificant as a trending topic on Twitter these days. Any crazy person can get on the news and alert the public that the end is near, and then he or she is made a mockery of when life and time is still in existence.
The 2009 John Cusak flick “2012” may have struck some fear into the hearts and minds of the non-believers. It made $166.1 million in the box office, but Hollywood produced blockbusters are merely for entertainment purposes, and not many people want to take them seriously.
However, according to the Mayan calendar, the world will end on December 21, 2012. But even still, you can’t be too sure how credible the Mayans are. They couldn’t even predict their own extinction.
Ironically, Nostradamus, the famous French apothecary who lived during the 1500s, also predicted that the world would end in December of the year 2012.
For me, it is chilling that Nostradamus is credited with predicting many of the world’s major events, hundreds of years before they occurred. In his writings, he seems to have predicted the death of Princess Diana, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
What if the predictions were real? What if in just one year from now, a mere 365 days, the world came to a devastating end? What if you knew it was going to happen? How would you live your last year on Earth?
Rapper Mase released a song in 1997 entitled “24 Hours to Live,” which asked the unfathomable question, “If you had 24 hours to live, just think, where would you go, what would you do?”
Listening to the song and the witty responses of DMX, and at the time “Puff Daddy,” I began to ask myself a similar question. What would I do if I had only one year left to live? Where would I go? The thought is a scary one to say the least. In one year I would be just a few months out of college, and barely 22-years-old.
Having one year left to do all the things I would want to do throughout my lifetime seems impossible, but if it came down to it, my bucket list would contain the most life changing of experiences. I want to see the world.
In this life we are living now, we take everything for granted, and I am no exception. In college, we are so consumed by our own lives that we tend to forget that there is a giant world outside of our own little bubble. I would want to see the way people live in other parts of the world. I would want to experience waking up early everyday not by the sound of my cell phone alarm, but instead by the sound of nature and thriving life.
I want to go everywhere, and see everything; from the Amazon in South America, to the penguins in Antarctica. I want to walk the Great Wall of China, and swim along the Great Barrier Reef. There are so many amazing things this world has to offer, and we tend to ignore that because of everything else that takes priority in our lives.
I don’t want to worry about money or the material things that have become so important but in the long run have no meaning. I want to live simply, like we were meant to. I want to value who I am, not what I have.
I don’t want to be consumed by technology. I want to be consumed by the beauty of nature and amazed at the natural wonders of the world. I want to see things without googling them. I want to live carefree, without a worry or moment of anxiousness.
I want to forget about Facebook, and Twitter, and e-mail. I don’t want to send texts or receive texts. The only form of social networking I want to engage in is with the people who surround me.
If a time limit was put on my days left, I could not imagine filling even a single minute with man-made technologies that we have become so dependent on. I believe there is so much more to life.
I want to help people, in whatever way I can. So many are less fortunate but embrace life for what it is. I would like to lend a helping hand to people who work hard for little in return. I would like to take a walk in someone else’s shoes, and I would like to change someone’s life.
It’s a strange thought, “the end of the world.” We don’t know how or when it’s going to happen. It could be next year, or a million years from now. I suppose since we don’t know, and we more than likely won’t know, we should live everyday like it’s to be our last. For me, it is more important to see and experience than it is to tweet and text. Live life for what it really is, and not what technological advances and the obsession with money have made it become.
PHOTO COURTESY of webexhibits.com
