We went to the beautiful wedding of Matthew and Natalia last week and the woman who was officiating was talking about how neither good times nor bad times last forever. I was listening carefully but the ceremony had put me in a reflective mood and I heard “Nothing lasts forever” where the nothing meant the “nothingness” of the universe. I had an existential moment that didn’t fit the optimism of a wedding at all. When I told Patrick about it he suggested that it was more nihilism than existentialism. I had to look both of them up.

• Existentialism: emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life
• Nihilism: extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence.

So of course Patrick was right: Nothing Lasts Forever (where nothing is “not anything” not “no one thing”) is Nihilism. It doesn’t matter if you capitalize, it doesn’t really exist anyway.

The good news is no one thing (prison) lasts forever. The bad news is that no one thing (vacation) lasts forever.

And finally there have been songs titled “Nothing Lasts Forever.”

Enjoy today because however you take the meaning Nothing Lasts Forever.