George Blake.  Ever heard of him?  Blake served as a spy for Great Britain for a number of years, then became a double agent for the Soviet Union.  Eventually caught, he served forty-two years in prison before staging a dramatic escape to Moscow.  He lived there the remainder of his life.  He was ninety-eight when he died.  Vladimir Putin himself heaped lavish praise on Blake in announcing his passing.

     

     And why not?  Blake's work for the Soviets deeply undermined, even fractured British espionage efforts in Eastern Europe.  In addition to transmitting much top secret information from Britain to the Soviets, Blake's work also resulted in the death of several British spies who had buried themselves deep in the Soviet networks.  The damage was incalculable.

     Yet Blake lived a very long life.  Others of much more noble character and activity, relatively speaking, lived very short lives.  On the tiny orb we call Earth, we wonder why, given the few years each of us has to live, this is.  It's an unanswerable question.

     Even if we believe in an afterlife and, perhaps, God.

     Life may be a mystery too complex for us to ever understand.  But we live it anyway.

     Why?  Only because it has a purpose exceeding itself.