Perspective

A well-known author writes in his memoir:

"[My literary agent]..in her last, sad days...she died of pancreatic cancer...The last time I saw her, by which she had been reduced to a one-room studio apartment on York Avenue, a long way from that castle on the Danube..."

This seems a good example of how looking at life without the hope of eternal life makes all the difference in the world. If the assumption is that this world is all there is, a tragic tone necessarily attends. But heavenly existence is a long, long way "from that castle on the Danube" too, it being so much better. The best times of her life would look pale and sickly from the heavenly perspective and the worst of times less troubling.