“Live every day as if it is your last,” as the refrigerator magnets say, and add an extra serving of appreciation for these rapturous days between May 21 and Oct. 21 – or Harold Camping’s overtime, as I like to call it.

Camping is the preacher, you may recall from a pre-Wiener news cycle, who famously predicted that the rapture, the end of time, would come May 21. We’re still here, so the preacher issued a correction, revising the date to October 21. To all those who quit their jobs on May 20 and told their bosses what they really thought of them, or took their nest egg to Vegas that week for a blowout “rapturous bash,” the preacher no doubt offers his apologies for any and all inconveniences.  The Washington Post reported that a young medical student had forsaken her studies in anticipation of the event.

Apocalyptic predictions are nothing new, mind you. The history of unfulfilled apocalyptic catastrophes seems to date back to the beginning of man’s written musings. The New Testament’s Book of Revelation may be a difficult read in our day and age, but in those times, educated audiences would have been familiar with a tradition of apocalyptic literature. The Greek word αποκάλυψις, or apokálypsis, literally means the “lifting of the veil” or “revelation.” Hence the enduring power of apocalyptic forecasts – we all thirst for a peek behind the curtain, to discern core spiritual truths, the point of it all; how the movie ends. We all want a peek at the scoreboard; it has to be somewhere.

You may have been surprised that the ramblings of an obscure 89-year old preacher became a national news story, but it boils down to these twin realities: we’re bored, and we want to know the score. That explains why the frequency of such predictions remains impressive in this supposed era of skeptical modernity. People are receptive to apocalyptic predictions because they want their lives to have meaning, and what could be more meaningful than being among the generation of humans who witnessed the finale, who took the stand on judgment day? How ho-hum, in contrast, to have been filler during the Middle Ages!

Flawed apocalyptic predictions, by definition, are not new either. St. Paul devotes much of his correspondence with a fledgling Christian community spread around the Mediterranean world to instructing them on how to settle down, how to behave in the ho-hum interim, before the Second Coming. Early Christians joined the Church believing that day was imminent, but they had to acquire patience and make their peace with the temporal world, maybe even take back what they told their bosses in their rapturous euphoria.

Part of the media’s fixation with Camping was the brazen specificity of his prediction. May 21 and no more! He didn’t wrap his call in enigmatic Nostradamus-speak or set the expiration date so far off into the future he wouldn’t be held accountable when it came and passed. We could put this one on the scoreboard, at least for now: Earth 1, Camping 0.

But it’s safe to say that those thirsting for the end of time have often misread the deeper meaning of apocalyptic tales. In the preamble to the Book of Revelation, John writes, “I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus…”

Notice the part about “patient endurance?” That tends to get overlooked in most end-of-time feverishness. The age-old wisdom of John’s words lie in their description of an attitude, understanding and perspective that allow us to find peace and meaning – on an ongoing basis, despite the ambiguity of it all, in the absence of a scoreboard.  We all have in common a life of heartaches and joys; failures and successes; losses and wins.  And patient endurance is required to hold it all together.

We all are keen to know ultimate outcomes, as if that knowledge will invest our daily lives with clarity and meaning. Particularly in America, we love clarity and certainty. The Green Bay Packers are Super Bowl champions! The Phillies win the World Series! Real American sports don’t end in murky ties! We won WWII! In Iraq, mission accomplished! Don’t ask about Vietnam; just tell us about clear winners and losers. Which takes us back to Camping: Wrong!  At least until October 21!

We’ll see, but one thing that’s certain is that come the fall, UCLA football will once again be a source of disappointment and heartache – yes, heartache – for me. Each season I believe again, only to be crushed, lessened. In other sports, when “my team” prevails, I am lifted, satisfied, affirmed. The successful operation to kill Osama bin Laden validates my confidence in the competence and values of the United States. We want to be on the winning side, to pass muster on Judgment Day. The spoils of victory for us fans is the validation that our choice to believe was correct – we were right to follow.

Camping will continue to have some fanatical followers, and if we make it to Halloween and he is proven wrong again, he will conveniently have 2012 to fall back on: the year the Mayan calendar runs out, suggesting to some the end of time.

But at least the Mayans predicted their expiration date thousands of years in advance. Whether that was a smart hedge or an instance of enduring patience on the part of the Mayans, now it will fall to the Campings of the world to take credit for Mayan ingenuity if we do indeed run out of time.

But if we don’t encounter the rapture in October or in the Mayan cycle, maybe the accumulation of blown apocalyptic forecasts will force us to find the scoreboard, and the meaning of it all, within ourselves.

William Gerrity, a director of Zócalo Public Square and the Chairman and CEO of The Gerrity Group, is an alum (and frustrated Bruin football fan) of UCLA.

*Photo courtesy of mikelehen.