WHY - THE VALUE OF LIFE

THE VALUE OF LIFE
“A man who dares to waste on hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
~Charles Darwin
“Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.”
~William James
Imagine yourself sitting on a park bench when a cute little girl walks up to you and demands that you explain everything she needs to know in life right there on the spot. If you choose not to dodge the responsibility by throwing a logic-stopping escape clause at her where would you begin explaining life?
I‟ve relived that scenario in my head a million times, and I still question whether or not I have the right answer, but you have to draw a line in the sand at some point. So here‟s what I decided the first thing a young person should know about life is.
The amount of effort you put into anything you do depends on your motivation, and your motivation depends on understanding the importance of the goal you‟re trying
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to accomplish. For example, if someone offered you $1 to run across the continent you wouldn‟t do it. However, if someone offered you $1,000,000,000,000 dollars or told you they‟d kill you and your whole family if you didn‟t then you‟d certainly do it. You wouldn‟t even have to debate with yourself about it or work up the strength. Your motivation would be so strong there wouldn‟t be a choice. There would only be one path in front of you.
Think about how that applies to life in general. If you don‟t know why life is important or how important life is then you won‟t have the proper motivation to take life as seriously as you should. Thus you won‟t put the appropriate amount of effort into living. Instead your motivation and priorities will default to immediate, shortsighted, petty, and ultimately meaningless goals, and you‟ll squander the short time you have here on such trivialities. However, if you truly, truly, truly understand the value of life you won‟t have to debate with yourself or work up the strength to sacrifice the petty temptations of the world to pursue life‟s highest purpose. Your motivation would be so strong there‟d only be one choice, one path before you. So the first lesson you need to learn about life is how valuable it is and why.