If we know our fate, do our lives hold meaning? It is the element of uncertainty that keeps us going. If we all knew when we would come into a lot of money, the exact time when we would meet the love of our life, when we would be disowned or abandoned, at what point our health would give in and the exact moment of our death, imagine what life would be like! Drudgery! Pure simple drudgery! Life would become so meaningless. All would be sealed. All our actions; our decisions would then be futile, absurd in the face of definite consequences; they would be mere incidents dotting our lives which we would already be aware of. Life would then be unbearable as we would trudge through one long day after another with no surprise, good or bad to look forward to. Either we would be terribly bored or terribly worried or terribly indifferent. It's the allure of the unknown the element of uncertainty, the thrill of not knowing that keeps us going. Because it gives us an opportunity to talk about luck, chance and above all God's will.

Just imagine if we knew the exact moment of our death. What would it be like? Either we would become indifferent not giving a thought to what we chose and why we chose to do or say one thing and not the other or it could make every decision, every word every action, extraordinarily meaningful given the finitude of our existence. In either case good and bad would cease to be….cease to be understood the way they normally are. They would cease to be normative and become relative. If I had just one more day to live what would determine the words I spoke today or the decision I made today or the things I did today? A. I'd say to myself: 'I am gonna die tomorrow anyway so let me do what I want to.' or B. I'd say 'I am gonna die tomorrow so what difference does it make even if I don't do it?'

But are our actions, our words, our decisions, our choices determined by the finitude of our existence? Most of the time, we are oblivious of death. We know it's out there somewhere in the shadows but we push it to the darkest, remotest recesses of our mind and carry on. Had we lived every day as our last day on this earth, would it have impacted our decisions and our choices differently? Would the notions of good and bad remain the same or become irrelevant and meaningless like everything else?