http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6UjzKrgMxg
In my world, the real world, there is nothing within my
sphere of potential action, which has no consequence, for which I have no
responsibility, or accountability. Every
breath I'm given, every second I'm given, as a capable being, which as a human
I am, I'm accountable to my human body - everyone alive today and everyone in
the future. I'm accountable for every
second, and the times in my life that I've diverged from that, are the times
that I've not been alive. Being alive is
not running from that accountability, but embracing it.
I matter. I'm a
capable individual. What I do has
consequences. Can I control outcomes
never, ever, that prevailing illusion is not the truth of how life works. Can I control what I attempt? Absolutely if I choose to, if I choose to
develop those capabilities to do so.
Does everything I do change the probability of
outcomes? Everything I do changes the
probability of outcomes. I can do
nothing to make outcomes certain; I can never avoid changing the probability
with what I do or don't do. And I love
this friends, this is where life is; we matter to the outcomes. Every breath we do.
There are two books that must be read if one wants to
understand the best that’s understood about our psychology, which is where we
live, the only world we ever can touch, our inner world; the easier of the two
is Man's Search for Meaning, [Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology, the other],
right in the title is another way of saying what I'm saying. Victor Frankel, a survivor
of the death camps in World War II made a study of people in the death camps,
and he was an inmate, and he saw as maybe no one has before or since, that the
single most important thing that the human being needs to be alive is meaning;
Human meaning; meaning to the lives of others, vision of an important path to
maybe help others. We all have that, so
I misspoke – the opportunity to help others.
What's needed to be alive, is an embrace of that – every second,
passionate embrace that it matters what I do.
It matters what the heart beating in my chest does. If it decides to take a second off, I'm
dead. If I is your brother decided to
take a second off, 'Oh, I'm not really responsible. There's not really any accountability or
consequence for me taking the evening off,' that's simply not true. Everything
has a consequence.
So did I just imply that there is no second that I should
use to relax? Well that's true, if it's
true that I don't need to maintain my mental health to serve, that it's all right
if I recklessly burn myself out; and that's not true, it’s not ok. It's not okay if I recklessly burn myself
out; it's not okay if the heart beating in my chest goes on some reckless rant
and burns itself out. No, there are
consequences to that.
But consequences, accountability, responsibility, embracing
that, friends, that's the only place Life, the feeling of being fully alive,
comes from. Think of all of our
Unviolent warriors throughout history that were of consequence. They embraced their responsibility, they
didn't run from it, as we have the last 40 years. What living death. They had no part of our beloved
irresponsibility, and illusion that we can do what we wish with no consequence
to others. They had not time for such
delusion, and you shouldn't either. And
most important you should stop leading others around you to that living death.
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