Spend Yourself Forward

Soon you will die and become nothing. At that moment, all of your potential will have expired. Everything you could have done will never be. But that is only the final death, an anti-climatic and appropriate one. You will first live many small deaths from many choices and potentials rejected and unrealized. You did not win them, so they passed away stillborn, never brought into existence.

In this space between temporary being and eternal nothingness, raw brutality reigns. One must perform the necessary while it remains possible, or resign it to lasting obliteration. Turned back on ourselves, it is endless triage; given the prospect of the looming void, we can always find a way to give more of ourselves to anything that matters and is worthy of the effort.

Every opportunity will soon be taken away and eventually we will extinguish our last tomorrow. But that comes later. For now, and the rest of your consciousness, you are active in the universe and can shape it to your abilities. For every setback, we neither despair nor yield ground, but remain courageously on our path.

Life is one long battle; we have to fight at every step; and Voltaire very rightly says that if we succeed, it is at the point of the sword, and that we die with the weapon in our hand--on ne réussit dans ce monde qua la pointe de l'épee, et on meurt les armes la main. It is a cowardly soul that shrinks or grows faint and despondent as soon as the storm begins to gather, or even when the first cloud appears on the horizon. Our motto should be No Surrender; and far from yielding to the ills of life, let us take fresh courage from misfortune.