Sunday, February 13, 2011

Another Pascal's Wager

What is your goal in life? It's a difficult question to answer, and if you haven't found an answer yet, let me propose a temporary one to you:
Live to grow. Live to be more mature, to be able to learn more quickly, and to be able to more quickly adapt to new situations. Treat life as training.
The reason is two-folds: for one, if you eventually decide to do something else with your life, then regardless of what it is, the growth you've gained will help you. The strengths/maturity you gain would make you more capable of achieving other things you want. You would have more and better tools to draw from.

The second reason is that it is fulfilling. Most people would say that they want to live to be happy, but there are different forms of happiness: there's happiness arising from everyday situations, and there's the deep sense of happiness you get from reflecting on who you are and what you do. Growing and becoming better includes being able to balance between the two types of happiness, and can be immensely fulfilling.

A third reason would apply if you are agnostic about whether or nor we would retain our consciousness after death. In the event that we do retain our consciousness, then who we are, the maturity and discipline of our thoughts, are the only things we might be able to take away (certainly we can't take away much else, including anything physical). Our maturity and cognitive discipline are the only things that might help us in tackling the new challenges that might lie ahead.

End of Entry