Cynisism or Realism?

There was a movie released a few years ago entitled "About Schmidt." Its about some guy that retires from working in an office all his life. Hes worked hard all his life for his retirement, and he finally gets to enjoy his retirement life with his wife of 30 years (or something like that). However, the first week of his retirement, his wife dies and he realizes that he has to go on for the rest of his life without her. A couple of days later, he gets a card in the mail about supporting some starving orphan in a third world country. So out of his desperation, he responds to the ad and starts writing a boy named Ndugu. Throughout the movie he tries to find meaning to his life through traveling to different places and visiting his family members. To make a long story short, he doesn't find meaning. There is no meaning to his life. He worked all his life for an empty promise. The great retirement that he'd been looking forward to all those long years turned out to be worse than any reality he could have imagined. This movie really hit home base with me. I love meeting different people, and seeing what they're like. I love to learn from them. When I tell various people that I'm in the Navy, they tell me that I should definitely stay in for 20 years and reap the wonderful benefits of retirement life. How wonderful, they say, it would be to have the government take care of all my needs for the rest of my life. I just smile and say that I'm still thinking about it. Of course, I don't want to offend. But, you see, reality has a funny way of sobering up dreams of grandeur. Lets say that a perfect retirement did work out. I would retire at age 41. And if I actually lived to be 120 years old (perfect world right?), that would give me 79 wonderful years of retirement checks to reap. Then what? How fast time really flies. I can remember before I could walk being pushed in the stroller by my Grandpa. It seems like yesterday. Time flies so much faster than we would like to imagine. But lets even forget about the limitations of time. Lets say I had 1000 years of retirement. It wouldn't give me meaning. In my experience, every time I solve one problem, there are multiple more waiting for me. I used to work part time at an upper class retirement home. Very prestigious, well to do people lived there. I knew one guy that used to be a rocket scientist for NASA in the 1960s. He worked on the first rockets to go to the moon! I knew another lady whose husband used to be Secret Service for 40 years of Presidents. If ever I could find someone to show me what real retirement living was like, it would surely be these people. But they didn't have the answer. If you've ever been to a retirement home, I'm sure you've noticed people in their worst conditions. Depression is rampant. Embarrassment is commonplace. Prestige is forgotten. My point: Retirement life is a lie. You retire when you're dead, and no sooner. There will always be pain. There will always be impossible difficulties to face. There is no rest in this life. There's a book in the Bible entitled Lamentations. It was written about 5000 years ago by a guy named Solomon. The book is all about how futile this life really is. No matter what great accomplishments we achieve, it means nothing. We will die, and we will be forgotten by this world. No matter what we try to do, this life holds nothing for us. And I think that all people, if they're honest with themselves, will find this to be true. I plan on going into greater detail with this subject in a future post, but for now I'll leave you with this thought: The only life worth living is one that is given completely to others. No vain glory. No self seeking. And here's the kicker: Its impossible to do. See ya.