“Let your memory be your travel bag.”

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Taken literally, I don’t regard this as sound advice.  But, as a recommendation of priorities, it has great merit.  In fact, in the eternal scheme of things, it’s probably inescapable.

You may have seen the bumper sticker that reads “He who dies with the most toys wins.”  I think it should be rewritten to say that “He who dies with the most toys is, nonetheless, dead.”

A recurrent theme in accounts of near-death experiences is that the two most pressing questions always involve what knowledge or wisdom the experiencer has attained, and how much he or she has learned to love.