“Most people chase success and then when that’s accomplished, they chase significance. Some people chase significance from the start.”
To know what is hot, one must experience cold.
To understand what is safe, one must recognize danger.
To seek happiness, one must dwell within sadness.
To feel pleasure, one must endure pain.
To strive for significance, one must accept meaninglessness.
To grasp the fullness of life, one must acknowledge suffering.
Humans love dichotomies. We love categories. It’s a biologically optimal way to condense our senses’ internalization of external stimuli. The combination of these judgements compile our perception of reality.
But are dichotomies necessary for reality?
Opposites enable the creation of two from one, that is, creating judgements from what is.
However, what is, is. It is only by comparing events to one another that they take on meaning.
That meaning is unique to the person based on his or her prior experiences.
And without those experiences, there would be no perception of an individual’s life. Just that which is.
It is another day in which we explore whether or not these judgements are beneficial.
For now, it remains simply that dichotomies and judgements live to fuel one another to create perceived realities, to create indviduals’ lives, to create the ego.
And that to grasp the fullness of life, one must establish a dichotomy which acknowledges the presence and opposite of contentment–of gratitude.
So as gratitude and contentment are felt and understood to their fullest, their opposite must be equally felt and understood.
As there exists gratitude, so too exists suffering to the degree and extent of which has been experienced.
So behind a person who chases significance from the start, it can be ascertained with a high degree of certainty that there exists experiences full of meaninglessness and suffering. A far cry from the perceived reality of present.