And why, oh why, poor soul, do you keep moving forward?

What is stopping you from stopping here? Dead in your tracks. Refusing to move forward. You could. It’s entirely your choice, totally up to you.

But you haven’t. Why not?

There’s been something thus far that’s kept you going. What is it? Let’s start there, shall we?

What has motivated you? What has inspired you? What has been your excitement from before?

Surely that should offer you a starting point at the very least.

Afterall, that’s a question we must each answer daily.

What’s gotten you out of bed? What’s kept you alive?
Dismal. Bleak. Demoralizing?

I say nay. The opposite in fact.

Something has kept you moving forward thus far. Surely you had something to look forward to. Surely there was some semblance of joy. Perhaps not now, but surely before?

Ahh, the beauty of reflection.

As we teleport back to our memories. It’s the feeble attempt to reconstruct our own minds. What makes us tick? What brings us joy?

What has motivated us before? What have we been obsessed by? What are the passions, the excitement, the purpose, the curiosity and connections that have kept us so alive?

They had to have been there. If not now, at the very least before.
How can I be so sure?

We are extensions of those who came before. We are a propogation of our parents, an extension of our ancestors.

And clearly they made it far enough. They made it far enough for Evolution, or Nature, or God or whatever you believe in to do what they needed Humans to do.

And we are a byproduct and continuation of them. Their blood is in our veins. Their spirit and excitement and nourishment and passions and joys and awareness run through us. It is our responsibility to carry that torch, to experience life as we were designed to experience it – an experience entirely unique to us.

Devoloped in part by Nature in part by Nurture, it is our responsibility to cultivate our own curiosity and excitement and experience of being alive – and that is ours and ours alone to cultivate.

Passivity will not do. Complacency kills and stagnation starves. Not our bodies, for those have the ability to go on being alive… but for our spirits and our souls. Lost among a broker or banker of the world, with a seedling of curiosity yearning to be watered.

So please. If you’ve got the choice. Water it.

Why are you alive?
Be.
Experience.

Forward.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it”

Seneca

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”

Friedrich Nietzsche

References

• (11 min) Wim Hof Breathing Method
• (1 min) So You Want to Be a Writer by Charles Bukowski read by Lex Fridman
• (3 min) On Becoming by Kurt Vonnegut
• Man’s Search for Meaning, book by Victor Frankyl, Auschwitz survivor and psychiatrist
• Ikigai, book by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles