In India, they have a tradition of splitting life up into three parts.

1. Your youth is spent in self-indulgence. (some Americans these days are trying to live their entire life in this stage. They refuse to get married, and if they get married, they refuse to have children.)

2. Your adulthood is spent in self-sacrifice. (that is, you get married, have kids, and work 80 hours a week to try to pay for your ever-increasing bills and payments.)

3. Your old age is spent in self-salvation. (the old men of India abandon their families, head off to the forest and meditate upon a hindu temble or whatever, to try and escape the great wheel of being.)

I feel that in America, perhaps we should incorporate the third stage. We have the first and second stages down, but we seem to be missing the third one.

By the way, Kierkegaard also talked about the “Stages on life’s way.” For him, the three stages of life are:

1. The aesthetic stage (where your only aim is to please yourself with beauty and pleasure) 2. The ethical stage (where your only aim is to please your wife and kids) 3. The religious stage (where your only aim is to please God)

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