Picture this.  Someone places a juicy ribeye steak fresh off the grill in front of you.  What’s the plan for this mouth-watering hunk of deliciousness?  To dig right in and enjoy it, right?  Now think about this. If you eat it now you won’t have it later.  Maybe rather than enjoying it now while it’s hot and oh so tender you should put it away so it won’t be gone soon.  Then the next day you look at it again and it’s not hot anymore but still looking good but if you eat it now it will be gone.  Another day passes and then a week, then a month.  Look at that steak, you achieved your goal and you still have it but now it is a dried hunk of shoe leather and completely inedible.  This is because that ribeye steak, no matter how much you may want to keep it forever, has an expiration date.

What does this have to do with life?  Everything in life has an expiration date.  Friends, family, relationships, youth (That’s a tough one but unfortunately it’s true).  You need to enjoy every morsel of life as it is presented to you and the tricky part is to enjoy it knowing it has an expiration date on it.  Every bite of that steak is a glorious culinary masterpiece but it will be gone soon. Now you have to decide that if this momentary time of carnivorous glory is worth it knowing it is just a momentary blip in the dinner of life.  You may not even want to order the steak now because you know you cannot savor it forever.  Knowing that steak has an expiration date doesn’t stop people from ordering it and enjoying it while you have it in front of you.

Every part of life is a wonderful little steak dinner all to itself but it too will not last forever.  Yet, for some reason we humans will avoid those moments of happiness for fear that it will not last.  We want everything in our lives to be forever but that just isn’t how it works.  Friends move away, relationships end and parents pass away (Yeah, that last one stings but it is true).  So what do we do?  Avoid these things so we don’t have to face the pain of when the expiration hits or enjoy them while we have them even with the understanding they will not last?

The answer isn’t really that hard and I would give it to you but right now I have a steak to eat.