A reader asks Matt whether it was hard growing up in a funeral home, surrounded by death and grief.

Matt responds:

In my first life, every day was taken up with the burying of the dead and the helping of bereaved famiies.  In such an atmosphere, it would be easy to think that all of life is dreaded and unfair. Therefore, for me personally to survive, I had to look beyond my everyday life, smell the roses, and sample the nectar of life.

I’ve come to the conclusion that life is a big smorgasbord.  There’s a lot of great things, and there’s a lot of stuff we hate.  Some of the food we must take while holding our nose.  Some of it tastes so bad, we might even have to puke.  But other dishes we savor and wish we only had a little bit more of that sweet, wonderful, exotic taste.

Life is made up of all of these dishes and more, so I tend to believe we can’t blame anything or anyone for our condition, especially God for putting us here.  The old copout, “I didn’t ask to be born,” is just that.  We’re here, we’re actors on the stage; we have to do our part.  We might as well enjoy it, because happiness actually resides between our two ears.  The mixture, the chaos of life and death and sickness and health and all the great mysteries of life, are part of the process.

So onward we go, and where we stop, nobody knows.

Matt