I, too, was raised to believe I was living in the last days. Both my parents refused to buy a grave plot for themselves, because they were convinced that they wouldn’t die. In other words, they would be raptured.

Although they couldn’t give me an exact day or week, month or year, when the rapture would take place, they advised people to live as though it could be in the next hour.

Like you, I didn’t see a lot of point in preparing for an adult life since I’d be raptured long before then.

I am now 72 years old and much to my surprise still alive and kicking. I abandoned my religious upbringing decades ago and breathed a big sigh of relief to finally get the God virus out of my brain.

Yet, there is now a haunting familiarity about the future, or rather the lack of a future. It looks like I’ve beaten the odds. My parents didn’t. Eventually someone had to buy a grave plot for each one of them. But I have long outlived their predictions for my own life. And it’s most likely that I’ll die before the planet is destroyed and can no longer maintain life. But the eery comparison of these two very grim outlooks is certainly ironic.