motivation

a conversation about the joys of life, some of those so called simple pleasures, got me thinking. i realized that i don't care about the afterlife anymore. heaven or hell seem irrelevant. but they weren't always irrelevant for me.

maybe karma, the afterlife, etc, are simply constructs designed to push us to look beyond hedonism. because, strangely enough, at some point, you realize this life is motivation enough... but you have to put yourself through a lot of wilful torture before you truly believe it.

it's hard to motivate someone to look beyond the hardships of life, the difficulties of doing "good", when pleasure is so accessible.

it's hard to see through what most people consider "pain" and "sorrow" without a light at the end of the tunnel, fake though it may be, to keep us going. but when you go through enough tunnels, you realize the light at the end is an unnecessary fixture. when you start looking around in the darkness, instead of focusing on the light, focusing on getting through, you start to savour the moment. savour the pain, if that's what you call it. because, to me, pain doesn't exist.

pleasure and pain are both just labels for feelings. just like various flavours complement each other to complete a meal, pleasure and pain exist only to produce some sort of contrast. they layer themselves upon our existence, but once we realize the role they play, they cease to feel like a burden.

like it or not, the pursuit of pleasure is as much of a burden as the evasion of pain. but we need neither, once we realize what we have built these mental constructs for.

life is beautiful.

life

death is always an uncomfortable topic, and even more so if you're discussing it with someone you love. but it's something I feel we all need to come to terms with, well before our hour is actually upon us. preparing for death when it doesn't seem imminent should be no less unpleasant than writing a will, or buying life insurance. and it is definitely far more important than those things, as material things like possessions and money can be done without; on the other hand, losing your loved one's life's purpose in your sorrow on their death, is an irrevocable loss.

i do not fear death. i fear dying before my work on earth is done. I fear dying before teaching the ones I love, and even the ones whose existence I do not know of, how to live.

as much as I would be sad to have my loved ones live years feeling my absence, i would be infinitely sadder if they spent even a moment feeling there was something I could have done, that they can't do even if they wanted to, or tried their best to. if they felt unhappy because i wasn't there, because they don't feel my presence inside themselves. if they felt they needed to hear my voice or feel my hug when they felt weak or afraid, because I have not made them strong enough.

still, i realize I would betray everything I stand for, if I lived in that fear. and so, I spend every moment of my life working towards alleviating that fear. it is the sole direction of my life. it guides me in everything I do. everything I want. everything I wish for.

immortality doesn't mean never dying. it means living after death. just as we live in the physical universe we have been given, our spiritual universe is also given to us, to hand over when our stewardship is over. and hence, we are all immortal. our physical life is merely our preparation for it.

we can't choose why we die. we can't choose how we die. but we can choose why we live. we can choose how we live. and more importantly, what we leave behind after our life is not our remains, but our creation. it is what we are. and it determines what we will be.

why do you live?