If you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do? While searching for common answers to this issue online, I found many answers similar to one man’s, who we’ll simply refer to as Every-American, who said he’d “get a new Credit Card, fly to Amsterdam, fly to Egypt to see the pyramids, get drunk, and get laid.” I think of the movie Se7en and wonder what Kevin Spacey’s character wouldn’t kill Every-American (or Queen Latifah’s character in Last Holiday) for. Basically, it seems as if our culture feels that death condones committing whatever vice or “deadly sin” we wish, simply because we won’t have to answer to it or face the consequences of ordered life. This of course depends on whether or not you are religious and how much trust you put in the physician that has figuratively just signed your death warrant, but the overall theme in uncomfortable.

Sadly enough stories like this reflect our culture for what it is, really giving insight to the true nature of so many of those people who have developed the core of our society. I think of an old Twilight Zone episode where a neighborhood turns on one another in a violent fit of self-preservation when they incorrectly assumed that the uneasy peace of the Cold War had been breached and that a nuclear holocaust was eminent. I also think of the movie Groundhog Day, which in a strange twist of fate, seems to be about this issue at first glance until you realize that the protagonist of that motion picture actually has infinite time as opposed to a very limited amount of time. The message behind that film has been expanded beyond Every-American’s carnal vices and seems to tell us that we should try to brighten as many people’s lives as we can, hoping that they will, in turn, brighten yours, creating an upward spiral of joy and contentment.

Groundhog Day’s message doesn’t make you cringe at the immorality of your own culture but it still lacks something. Why does it matter after you’ve died? Everyman lacks the broad, slapstick humor of many morality plays that portray as clowns the vices that try to lure the Everyman figure away from salvation – from the intro in the Norton Anthology. The question is, given his situation would we do the same, or welcome those vices with open arms? All good things end, so why attempt to experience life in some sort of glorified final vacation when you’ll be dead soon afterwards. This is where Everyman hit it on the head. I don’t care if you’re religious, semi-religious, an atheist, or someone who feels as if God or our religious factions on Earth have destroyed your life, you have to try. You need to beg to God to let you live on in Heaven with eternal happiness, because if he doesn’t exist you’ll still be in the same boat in a couple weeks but if God does indeed exist…