I sat next to a politician at a dinner recently. While we had a fascinating conversation about many things, one part of the discussion was particularly interesting. Our conversation veered off into the ethereal realm of the importance of living your life as you see fit–doing what you think should be done, not what others think you should do.

The analogy that he used to illustrate this point was the three act play. He said that, in his opinion, life was like a three act play. And, wouldn’t it be terrible to come to the end of the third act, and realize that you hadn’t lived life the way that you wanted to. At the end of Act III, the “Author” walks on stage and says, “That’s all there is. It’s over. It’s finished. Go home.”  You can’t go back to Act I. This wasn’t a rehearsal. There are no rehearsals. You can’t go forward, because there is no forth act. It’s just over–and, you didn’t do what you wanted to do, or what you thought should be done.

Pretty profound for a politician, I thought.

God played this neat little trick on us when He made us. He gave us this cool thing called “Free Will”. We choose how we want to live our life–and, then death seals the compact forever.