Oedipus at Colonus

I am reading and prepping to teach Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, and it occurs to me that maybe one reason I blog (I can't believe I'm using "blog" as a verb!) is so that I have a space to say all the things that I can't really say in class. I mean, often, not always, in class, I feel compelled to follow some unspoken, official agenda, rather than point out what's really speaking to me in a piece of literature. I feel like I have to elicit and then validate students' analyses, rather than giving my own, if it's non-traditional. Anyway, As I'm reading this second play in the Oedipus cycle, it strikes me that in part what this play is really about is the way that whether we are kings or blind, wandering paupers--Oedipus has been both--we all die in the same state somehow. Seeing Oedipus a broken, yet still prideful old man, Theseus tells him, "I know that I am man; in the day to come / My portion will be as your, no more, no less." Isn't this an indication that we all spend our lives one way or another, yet end up equals, almost, at the moment of death? Is this specifically a pagan way of looking at human existence? Although Theseus and Sophocles are, I suppose, pagans themselves, it seems to me that this is a truth that transcends the pagan / Christian dichotomy, that it is true that at the moment of death, what we accomplished in the world's eyes is not what counts. I'm not sure. I guess this is an issue with which I am grappeling--what, in the end, is the value of our lives, our actions? At the moment of death, how will I measure myself? Will I consider my life meaningful? Will I have served a purpose? Or in light of eternity, do such questions merely fall away?