Pain is essential for survival, pain is the tangible material that creeps into our mind and screams at us to recognize that something is terribly wrong.

We live by choice and by necessity. We choose the mechanisms that are essential to ensure satisfaction of our baseline survival. What labor we willingly endure in order to meet our minimalistic subsistence requirements and what activities we elect to pursue in order to mollify our desire for living joyfully and attain self-realization defines our essential self’s core personality.

Pain touches everyone differently. Some people suffer from a genetic defect that weakens and kills their pain neurons. People who are unable to register physical pain usually die young because they lack an essential survival monitor that tells them how to protect themselves.

The stories of people who came before us seeking slabs of truth forges an integral part of our personal survival plan.

Civilization is much more than the survival of the fittest and the unrelenting culling of the weakest members. Civilized people share a value system that extends far beyond doing whatever it takes to survive. Mere barbarians might be devoted to a life of exploitation. In contrast, civilized people value nature and care for the most vulnerable members of their kind.

Each person must choose their own version of reality by living in a manner that ensures personal survival, appeals to their innate intelligence, and corresponds with their virtuous life decisions. … Each person must ascertain the proper and natural way to lead his or her individual life. We live only once and seek to make our singular existence count by leaving a personalized mark upon the world by contributing to human happiness or advancement in knowledge or in the arts.

A bird with a broken wing cannot survive nor will a man with a broken spirit endure.

Change is part of life. Civilizations rise and fall, the tides wax and wane, the planet undergoes periods of climatic revolution, the young grow up, and the old die. What will come is that what shall be. Survival as individuals and as a species demands fluidity of human thought and the demonstrated ability, temperament, and perseverance to change.

Without parlaying with the renunciation of the world, a person must establish a means to live in harmony with the uncertainties of a chaotic world.