What inspires you in life? What makes you want to reach for the stars and do something truly extraordinary?
I try to live my life according to two great precepts.
The first I take from Catholicism, and it is that every human being is made in the likeness and image of God. Therefore, simply by existing, each individual is due profound respect. The shame in life is that there are so many people who do not live their lives with their heads held high in a way that demands the respect they deserve -- and by the same token, most people do not accord others the reverence they are due simply for having been called out of nothingness by the Creator.
The other is taken from Nietzsche's moving essay on Schopenhauer. "At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. He knows this, but he hides it like an evil conscience . . . " Coupled with an understanding of this is the fact that for every life there will be a reckoning. Regardless of whether one believes in reincarnation (which I don't) or even in God (which I do), we each answer to ourselves and to posterity for the life we lead. The existentialists, both theist and atheist, understood this in a way that regrettably few do today.
Thomas Merton pointed out that, were it not for the fall, each of us would flower in a way unique to our own divine disposition. As a result of our own sinfulness we will never reach our full potential -- we shall always be mangled and deformed flowers. But it is better to be a
fleur du mal than an insipid, dead stalk!
