I saw this on a t-shirt when I was seventeen:



Unless you're Buddist, death is forever.



At the time, it didn't do anything other than make me laugh. My faux-wise cyncism, unjostled by life's slings and arrows saw only humor. But there is a coldly succinct truth stated there: we are, each of us, only given one life.



So what to do with it? The question didn't have much urgency at seventeen. Teenagers feel nothing but raw potential, for good or for ill. Even adolescent angst has an immortality to it.



But still, the question is there, only gaining urgency as we age: what am I doing with my life? And its flipside: what should I be doing?



What indeed.