Imagine you have a 300-foot roll of gold leaf "tape". With another person helping, unroll the tape all the way until there's one long strand of straight tape...now you're standing 300 feet apart, with this length of tape between you.

Now, rip or cut a 1 millimeter long piece of tape off the roll and set it aside. You have 3 seconds to do whatever you like to that 1mm -- you can try and make it pretty, or fun, or ugly and destructive -- before you lose your grip on the remainder of the roll.

That 1mm is like our life here on earth. When you're trying to do something with it, it's easy to see so much detail and size to it, and after you're done "being creative" it might even be tempting to look at it as "really good" or "totally bad"; one thing's for certain, though, and that's that it doesn't matter what you do to your "1mm", it will never be as perfect as before you started fiddling with it.  But eventually you'll look up and realize that little sliver, no matter how "good" or "bad" you were able to make it, simply cannot compare with the remaining expanse of gold that is waiting for you.

Some will try and keep their "1mm" nice and ignore the rest; others realize that no matter how "good" they can make that "1mm", they'd rather have the rest of the 300-foot roll.  Just realizing "there's more on the roll" can really unlock all sorts of wonderful things in life; you're no longer running through life like a kid from Siberia at Disneyland -- trying to cram as much into the short time they have because they'll probably never get another shot.

So next time you find yourself overly focused on the here and now, be reminded that there's a whole lotta "tape" left after your 1mm is used up.  It helps keep things in the proper perspective. ;)