Live It Up

This is untitled, from a lecture, by Dr. Steven Walker (with an excerpt from Tennyson's Ulysses), English Professor, Brigham Young University.

"The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs,
The deep moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends, 'tis not too late
To seek a newer world."

If Jess Walker were here with us, my father, arguably the finest father in the history of the western world, whom I used to wheedle into coming to class to tell us what life was about, he would say: "Go for it."

When Dad turned forty he said "Life begins at forty." When he turned fifty, he said life begins at fifty. He said it at sixty, and seventy, and eighty, and would have said it at ninety if he hadn't died a couple of years short of that.

He loved to quote the Savior saying "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." That's what Dad would say, did say so often I can hear it still echoing through these academic corridors:

"Live.
Live it up.
Live right here, right now.
There is only you.
You are a unique event.

There will never be another Steve Walker,
and if you don't live his life now,
it will never get lived.
No matter how infinite your celestial kingdoms,
no matter how eternal your eternal lives,
you will never have more life
than you have now.

It's now or never.
Live it up, folks.
Live it up."

"Though we are not now that strength
Which in time past moved earth and heaven,
That which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic fates,
Made weak by time and fate
But strong in will to strive, to seek,
To find, and not to yield."

Man, I wish I could find it within me to live to my fullest. I am trying day by day to drink from the fountain of life that is passion and vision. We have such a short time, let's not waste it on frivolous things, meaningless activities. Rather, indulge in loving relationships, let yourself love, and let yourself be loved, indulge most of all in the passions that you have discovered within your soul. Take every moment of living as a precious sip from that well of life which inevitably dries up when the time is past.