“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.” — Ecclesiastes 7:2 NIV

The real message in this verse is not that we ought to spend more time at funerals than at parties, but that we all need to remember that death is our end. We can try all we want to avoid thinking about it, we can schedule our calendar with every party our social circles offer, but we cannot put our head in the sand when it comes to planning for our afterlife.

There should be no surprise when we find ourselves drawing our final breath. There may be a surprise in how it comes about, whether it’s because of an unexpected disease or a traumatic accident, but death is certain.

Before you start remaking your personality into a solemn, serious, or grim projection in order to follow the verse, remember that this is written by the same person who wrote that there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). So don’t obsess about the certainty of dying, plan for it, but until then laugh and dance a little.