Pursue the next great adventure, even as the traps spring on you and the scar tissue accumulates.  If you’re forced off the path, consult the map of your experience and find a new way.  Keep going and you’ll find treasure.  Because really, what’s the alternative?  Being stuck in time, always afraid of the next obstacle?  We all die anyway, so I say let’s not tread water, let’s make a mad dash for those shining shores.

At the beginning of endeavors, evolution is paired with pleasure.  Then we get to that familiar crossroads—where we must choose between evolution or wallowing in comfort.  The choice that’s made at those moments determines whether or not we build character. 

I’ve made a lot of bad choices during those moments, but the cool part is I’m faced with new moments every day.

One of my ego’s most insidious tactics is to be accepting of others’ weaknesses and in turn, unthinkingly accept my own weakness (not an excuse for self-flagellation, btw).  But it has always been the case that I must forgive others (as much as is practically acceptable) while mercilessly driving myself to greater heights.

In fact, being forgiving of others is one of those ways in which I drive myself to keep going higher.  

I want to die admiring the effort I directed towards achieving my goals.  

And because I could die today, I will direct effort towards achieving my goal TODAY.

Given what the evidence seems to be telling us—that we are brief dots in an incalculably vast canvas—the idea of “practicality” seems to fall away.  But to me this is not an excuse to wallow in wide-eyed wonder, because there are still bills to pay, still goals to accomplish.  To me this simply means that while we put our best foot forward, we enjoy ourselves as much as humanly possible, because why the hell not?

It becomes stunningly obvious how malleable reality is when artists begin using words/brushstrokes/code/sculpture to instantiate entire universes and lifetimes.  Some of those ideas become story, others become cars/houses/every manufactured thing our eyes take for the dullness of everyday life.  

If you are ever bored, all you have to do is look around with an unveiled mind and clear eyes; it becomes inescapably obvious that our lives are built on imagination and whimsy.

I feel like if you ponder “truth” long enough, you should be able to see it everywhere, in everything, and be able to iterate it into whatever you need.  There is no need for condemnation or worship; there is only what fits best at any given moment.

If it were simply a matter of willpower, there would be no need for strategy.  Chest-thumping and magnificent effort are romantic and eye-catching, but unless they get the job done, they remain ostentatious and impotent.

I suspect that the reason for being trapped in a body, and for only being able to perceive a one-way flow of time, are the same reasons I sit in class or a movie theater:  

To learn and to be entertained.