Hello there! I hope you are all doing very well. Welcome to this first post of mine, on the 24th of July, 2016. This is the day some people celebrate 'pioneer day'. What is this you ask? Well, back on the 24th of July 1847, some brave Mormon pioneers first ventured into the Salt Lake Valley, opening up to over 150 years of business, innovation, and success for their community. So this day is a celebration of life for them.
I know some people think that celebrating commemorative days is based on an artificial division... After all, round and round we go, where do we stop? Nobody knows! Well, other than astrophysicists and Nostradames.
But I think it's useful to recognise commemorative days, in the same way it's important to recognise new years and birthdays. It's important because it reminds us that we are going to die: one moment shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.
There are times when this realisation becomes more vivid, as happened with me undergoing a severe and multi-year form of depression; and other times where it is less vivid, for example when one is bored or pissed off.
But it is always essential to remember our coming death. Death is the great spur of ethics. The reality of death is a reminder of prioritisation. Prioritisation is only required because of mortality; if we had an infinity in which to get anything done, then we wouldn't really need to prioritise much. Death is the great organiser of hierarchy in life; we need values because we are going to die.
Based on this inevitability, we can remember how important it is to be kind with those we love, to be courageous with evil-doers, to strive for virtue. It is because of death that we are urged to not fall pray to the great temptation of procrastination of virtue, which is marked by conformity, fear of others, fear of disapproval, fear of frowns, and all other such nonsense.
There is nothing that clarifies, cuts through and captures — as Gordon Gekko would say — virtue more than a remembrance of mortality.
In our middle age, but also anytime that no big changes take place in our life, it is easy to get stuck with the idea that the next day is the same as the one that passed. An impression that every day is the same. The great thing with an important date, a commemoration, a new year, a birthday, is simply this essential reminder of mortality. It reminds us that we cannot afford to learn priorities in our old age; that is one of the great tragedies to be avoided in life!
Do not learn what is really important when you're old, or, as Cornelius said to King Lear, "thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise".
Learn wisdom, learn priority, capture courage, act nobly... based on a remembrance and a premonition of death. Do not wait until you are old and sick, wasting away, and probably even on your death-bed, to wonder why you weren't better, why you weren't more courageous, why you weren't more forthright, why you weren't more honest; why you may have wasted your life in inaction, procrastination, delay, avoidance, and video-games. Why you may have compromised with relationships that were non-exalting! Meaningful relationships are a fire under the rockets of our true selves, not a repetition of avoidance, decay, and historical habit.
So do not fear new years, birthdays, commemorations.
Make resolutions and remind yourself of the hour-glass that is always falling out.
We are always running out of time, and the best way to make use of our time is to remind ourselves of its grim, physical and organic finity. Be good, be virtuous, be courageous; seize the day now, be heroic now, do not wait for life to ease your passage to a better existence. Do not wait for circumstances to open all of the thorny doors of self-improvement.
Do it now, will it now: there is nothing but decay without will-power! There is nothing but disintegration without resolution. Find your values, put them in front of you, make the priorities necessary to realise those values, and then just freaking ACT on them!
We are not even guaranteed tomorrow, let alone the next year, the next decade, the next half century...
The last taste you do not want to be bitterly swallowing as you slip through to the great unknown, as you fall into the infinite black, the last thought you do not want to have during those dire moments... is regret.
Do the right thing now, make the correct life-choices now, improve your relationships now, confront vacillators — including those within yourself — now... and never, ever forget: every addition of years is a subtraction to yours.
Remembering your mortality is remembering the importance of living.
#life #motivation #motivational #inspiration #inspirational #philosophy #meaning