Everything has an end: a lesson from my little daughter

No doubt that we get carried away with the things in life. So much so that we get delusional that everything will last forever, while the bitter truth is exactly the opposite. Strange it may seem, but my most current reminder about this fact came from my 1 year old daughter.

A couple of years ago I got a dell notebook dedicated for my work. I use it for blogging, light gaming, writing books, and of course writing reports for my professor. It was a workhorse and it served me well over the past 5 years. All my research data, my ideas, my work and writings, and even my entertainment are centered in that notebook.

Last weekend, while I was using it at home with my five year old son, my daughter came and started her peculiar hobby, banging the computer. So far, my wife’s newer notebook was able to withstand the abuse. However, a different fate was in for my old dell. A couple of minutes later, the screen suddenly froze.

After a forced shutdown, the computer wouldn’t boot into windows, and only showed a black screen. Not even the BIOS screen appeared. I tried everything I could to get it to work again. I cleaned all the memory sockets, cleaned the hard disk socket, and tried booting from a USB flash disk, but to no avail. I then concluded that there must be a problem with the motherboard. And when the motherboard is dead, the computer is as good as dead as well. Repairing the motherboard would probably cost double the initial price of the computer. Thank God I was able to retrieve all the data I had by plugging in the hard disk to another notebook.

Although at first I was in shock (mainly because all of my ongoing research data was in that computer), I realize that through my dear daughter, God gave me a much needed reminder about the reality of existence. Everything will end. No matter how precious or important they may be, no matter how careful we are in taking care of them, they will eventually deteriorate and meet their end one day. The house that crumbles bit by bit, the car that goes to the mechanic more often, our memory, our life, and everything in existence is bound by this fate. When we truly understand and are conscious about this, we’d have a better attitude in facing the losses that we experience everyday.

No doubt that everything belongs to God, and everything will be returned to Him