How to appreciate life

Many, if not most, folk squander their lives as they slog through the thick mud of mundanity. This wastefulness is because of a belief in some sort of afterlife, some sort of perpetuation of the self. In the back of the mind there is the idea of a second chance.

If we accept that this is it, there is only one go-around, that we are unique beings that have never been here before and will never be here again, if we dispel the notion that we get a second chance through reincarnation or going to heaven or to hell, if we realize that we die and by dying vanish from eternity even more quickly than we appear, then every day, every breath, every moment would become so precious to us that unless we were fools we would do what it takes to make sure that our brief time in existence is of significance, if only to ourselves. We would stand in awe of the miracle that is life from its most simple form to its most complex. We would not waste time in fretting our hour upon the stage.

As Shakespeare has Macbeth say (I found this with the links on a web page; my apologies that I did not record the provenance),
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."