Not because its better to play the odds and be good just in case. I always thought that prayer showed guts, and what I'm saying here is, in a way, the same thing. This isn't about worship, or about prayer. But it is about doing what we do with our lives not because we expect to get something good in reward, or because we're afraid we might get something awful as punishment, but because our love and our compassion and our selves are all we have to offer to each other or to the future that are worth a damn. Our best is the only gift we have to give that is worthy of us, or of those who will receive.
Life is short.
Love is rare, and hard to find. Leaves a trace of something good behind, something that wasn't there before. Something that can, perhaps, continue after we're dust. Ted Sturgeon was already dead when I read Godbody . I wept when I finished the book, not because he was dead, but because he had once been alive, and while he was alive his love had driven him to leave a legacy that made my life better.