To conquer one’s fears, one must see past them. To fear is natural; to see past them is heroic. Fear is normal additive to life; symbolizing that there are new, sometimes extraordinary things to come, to face. To be able to see these things before they happen is a sign of wisdom. To see past them is a sign of leadership and boldness. Fear is nothing out of the ordinary. To recognize that one fears is to recognize that one values his life. Heeding the initial call of fear is something all men should do. But to truly be the leader; to truly be one who is heroic and bold, is to focus on getting past these fears.
It goes without saying that to feel is to be wrought with fear. And not all fear is negative by nature. To be afraid is cowardice. But to fear is to have a true grasp for what one feels. How humans today can go through life ignoring fear is a frightful concept. Too many times and way too often to human individuals forget their heart and step into life without responsibility. The foundation of successfully getting past one’s fears in a responsible and valuable manner is to have hope. Hope is what makes one’s life continue forward.
Setting goals for one’s self is fine, but impossible to reach without hope. Many humans believe that hope is what creates disappointment; a sad belief to have. For hope provides one with the ability to project success in one’s mind, aids in one’s acceptance of one’s faults and to know that challenges lie ahead, and provides the strength needed to remain appropriately focused on reaching one’s goals. Hope provides one with trust, healthy and responsible anticipation, and gives one optimism. Hope does not create disappointment, expectation does. For when one expects, one ignorantly narrows one’s focus.
Expectation is what creates disappointment by causing each expectant individual to feel pessimistic with failure, impatient with new fears and challenges, and immature and uneducated when their narrow scope of goal achieving goes awry. Hope brings one’s focus on goal achieving into a broader view allowing one to see new fears and challenges and helping one to prepare. To be born is to live. To live is to fear. To fear is to be challenged. To accept one’s fears is to be mature and be challenged. To face one’s fears and accept the challenges is boldness.
And to hope for the best is to be focused, bold, mature, challenged, and alive. Preparation, therefore, becomes an important idea. One would never enter into battle without armament and weapon. So why should one enter into responsible living without it? The saying goes, that one should always hope for the best and prepare for the worse. Notice, however, that the saying does not say to hope for the best or prepare for the worse. For with responsible living comes failure. Not necessarily complete failure, but certainly failures. Does failure mean giving up? No.
If one was to walk down an unfamiliar sidewalk and trip and fall due to a large crack, should one never walk down the same sidewalk? For with failure comes even more wisdom and knowledge. And as many great men have said in the past, knowledge is power. Now one knows of the crack in the sidewalk and can be better prepared to face it when one walks down the same sidewalk. Preparation, therefore, is a necessity for living. Now, one’s stature in life, one’s career, one’s financial situation, one’s possessions never make the man. It is in the heart, with the wise and mature use of the mind, that makes the man.
To ignore one’s heart is to ignore one’s true feelings; one’s true fears. If one is faced with a life that is poor by today’s standards, then one must work harder to use one’s heart and mind. Never should one’s stature, career, finances, or possessions lead their motives for living nor should they become one’s goals. Too often human’s accept the life they are handed without thinking–without feeling. But the one who sees his position on this planet as a human, faces his adversity, and makes a heart felt, conscious decision to set goals, have hope, and move forward is the one who conquers life in it of itself.
No matter where one ends up, in stature, in career, with finances, or with possession, to do this is the true meaning of living. Does this answer the age-old question of what the meaning of life is? No. For the meaning of life is life itself. If one follows the philosophy that to be born is to live and to live is to die, skips out on life. But to live and then to really live is when one finds his true meaning. Each human individual has been handed a set of genes that makes them who they are by nature. Each of us is different. No one person is the same as the next.
Genetically, it is proven. But who one is genetically and in birth is an individual. A single life form that is like no other. Each human being, with their genes in body and with their heart and mind, choose who they will become. Yes, we all have the same basic form biologically and all bleed the same color. But this is not an essay about racism or ignorance. Far too often do humans sit and wait for life to hand them their purpose. Little do these individuals know that being alive is their purpose. What each human does in that purpose is for him to choose.
A great Biblical philosopher once took the ancient Christian notion of prayerfully awaiting on God’s call for their lives and turned it completely around. And with a little thought, one can see the challenge of this notion to be rather intriguing. The idea goes like this: If one is a true believer in God and in Christ, then one is usually raised to believe that God has a specific purpose for him in their life. One is typically taught from the beginning of their Christian life to pray faithfully that God will show him where God would have him to be.
Whether the Christian is praying about marriage, career, or simply about residence. The Christian is taught that God has the final answer and he is supposed to wait for that answer. The philosopher, after many years of education and study into the Bible, found that not since the time of Christ’s death has the typical faithful Christian been specifically chosen to take on one and only one task in life. But rather that the Christian was born of a particular genetic nature and that these genes are the tools and talents with which the Christian was to faithfully go about his life.
Rather than face and accept the facts about who he was through birth and to pray for God to pick him up and toss him through the door with which God desired him to go through, for lack of a better example, the philosopher saw that God created man to be a self-thinking, self-governing individual with a free will. Each human, according to this philosopher’s ideas, is equipped to be whom ever they choose, just so long as they go about their lives, though faithful prayer, in a light and life that would exemplify that of Jesus Christ’s. Hence the acronym WWJD–What Would Jesus Do.
And when looked at in this light, it is seen more clearly than it ever has been before. Christ, in his 33-year life, was who He was day to day. No expectation. No agenda. Christ was because He lived. His goal? To serve His Father. Did he succeed? And then some. Christ lived each day with His goal in mind and without mistake. Did Christ have fears? Of course. His fears were quite prevalent the day He was nailed to the cross. But did His fears rule His life? Never. Christ was born of a virgin and enter the human world with His own set of genes; His own set of tools and talents.
This is shown by the career with which He lived the majority of His adult life. The life of Christ was that of a humble carpenter. For He took the tools He was born with and did something with them. And this is exactly what all of this is about. Never once did Christ ask for God to show Him to where God wanted Him to be in stature, in career, with finances, or with possession. As we all know, Christ had very few possessions. Christ never worried about his career or with meeting His financial responsibilities. And Christ never once gave His stature in society a single thought.
He lived because He was alive and because He knew His purpose and He had set goals. As each human is born, each human has a new task: To live. To live in the right, one must find out who one is by nature. This is the process by which one accepts new wisdom and knowledge. By exploring and taking advantage of the resources this planet has to offer, one because stronger in nature and in whom he is in talent. It is by focusing on who one is that brings in new fear. And it is by facing and accepting and choosing to move forward through one’s fear that one is able to see where one can be in life.
Never should an individual go only so far as to know and to understand who one is by nature and then to wait. Life, as a whole, is out there; ripe for the taking and ready to be challenged. For it is by accepting one’s own individual challenges in one’s individual life that one, thereby, challenges life. To take into heart, to accept in the mind, and to choose to move toward the goals set, in faith, will one truly have invested what has been invested in him. With age comes experience and with experience comes knowledge and understanding.
No one individual is ever completed with his or her growth. For the wisest of all men has death to face. And with death imminent for all, one will still have to face fear till the very end of one’s existence. So to take what one learns through life and to press on towards the goals set will one begin to face new, challenging, and sometimes even exciting new fears. Life will never complete itself until one has completed the life he is given. Therefore it is incredibly irresponsible to merely accept death as the imminent future, settle into a comfort zone naught of challenge, and to merely exist.
Could a better definition of waste be drawn? It is each and everyone’s responsibility to know who he is. And it is, therefore, each and everyone’s responsibility to take what he has as genetic tools to better his life and to better the lives of others. For if all accepted individuality and accepted the individuality of others, then all would have the same empathy for one another. This is harmony; the ideal nature of life by which life is then lived. To live in harmony with one another is but a simple step forward in one’s thinking.
Once one has recognized one’s individuality, accepted one’s fears, and chosen to set goals and move forward with the important aid of hope, will one have truly conquered living life. Knowing that life truly is short and can only be lived once is probably the best line of thinking for inspiration. All humans live on a large planet, filled with exciting new experiences, adventures, knowledge, and a wealth of resources to help one with gaining wisdom and knowledge. To realize this and to allow life to take place in this is to responsibly live life.
Are all humans bound for foreign lands, foreign thought, or foreign experiences? No. Should all humans hope to experience foreign lands, foreign thought, and foreign experiences? Without question. Having a responsible, reasonable, and mature grasp, mentally, of all that is out there to enhance one’s experience in life, is one of the greatest blessings one can bestow upon himself. For knowing that the tools one has through birth need to be used and practiced with; sharpened and prepared for more difficult and challenging use, does one truly and actively approach living life from a strong foundation.
Why should anyone try to live life in a constant motion towards becoming greater, becoming stronger, and becoming wiser and more educated? Why not? For facing life with arms crossed, brow furrowed, and expectation as a rule is, without question, a waste. Living life is all about striving forward. So why not do what one can, utilizing one’s God-given tools, to become the greatest individual one can be? Live. Accept. Face. Strive. Truly live.
