This book is not a self-help manual, nor is it a religious text, nor a philosophical treatise. It is an invitation to thought. Every line is for you to wrestle with, for you to explore the depths within the words and their meanings; taking that which is applicable for you and your growth.

We live in an age of ideological saturation. The marketplace of ideas has become a colosseum where distractions wage war against each other for the reward of our attention. They hasten to slaughter for the sake of our applause, selling themselves for the depletion of our pockets. We watch and laugh as the gladiators are reduced to ash both physically and spiritually. In turn, our souls increasingly become dark and evil as we beg for more.

Excitement and attention has become the new currency of our age. For it, we have paid the price of our spirits. Instead of engaging with life, we watch from the sidelines. Instead of proposing new ideas, the gears of our mind have been corroded by the rust of under utilization, and we've succumbed to digesting and adopting the thoughts of the loudest person in the room.

When will the common man decide that his faculties are not limited to that of mindless consumption of common thought? When will he think for himself? Only when he has decided that newfound thought is worth pursuing.

The once celebrated aspects of humanity are slowly being shoved to the corners of our minds collecting so much mental dust that people no longer recognize the eternal beauty in them. The holy language of music is becoming nothing more than a means of distraction. Culture is nothing more than something we vaguely regard while we silently judge others who do not look, act, or speak the same as we do. Art is not appreciated in depth, rather quickly scanned and digested for a brief moment of excitement before we quickly lose focus and divert our attention to the next greater distraction.

Even something like career and employment has been stripped of fulfillment, purpose, mission, and aim resulting in a soulless pursuit of greater monetary gain. Conversation has become short, dry, judgemental, and too costly to pay attention to.

Consider the young boy who is born into a pre-determined environment. In doing so he becomes a Christian and attends church service weekly to please his family, he pursues business, politics, or engineering because his Father said so, and potentially even becomes a musician so he could serve his idea of God within this church he was born in. On the surface there are no issues here, except for the fact that none of these choices were truly made on his own. There was no depth in thought of any of his choices, just a mindless decision to walk on the paths laid out for him generations prior.

What happens then once he's met with the incredibly educated atheist skeptic who shreds his theology and proposes his life is completely meaningless unto death, or the incredibly rich and successful man who says his pursuits of college and career is simply him getting scammed by private corporations, and the insatiable existential void within himself whispering a sweet temptation to give up on his own life?

Ideological and existential collapse. This in retrospect is the best thing that can happen to a citizen of this dying society.

These quickly adopted metaphysical frameworks that were pre-determined for us from birth, or hastily adopted without any depth or thought, are all destroyed under scrutiny. With their destruction or inevitable decay, follows the existential crises of many citizens within. Not because they themselves are shallow, but because we have not been trained to think for ourselves.

All that is left is this young boy face to face with a new revelation. Left to shrivel and die within the withering cold in these chasms of existential collapse he is given the choice to wallow in pity and self defeat or choose the agonizing crawl towards self-actualization. The ability now to reconstruct a way of life constructed upon a firm foundation of truth. One that does not crumble in the face of death, but instead braces the absurdity of it.

I propose a new perspective, one coined many years ago and has earned its permanence in history. Memento mori; a latin phrase literally meaning “remember that you must die.” Even now in writing this I can feel the intensity and beauty of the statement, as it grounds the reader into the present moment and makes all else seem incredibly futile in comparison.

It makes the future seem negligent, because what isn't the present moment does not matter; in fact it does not even exist. For all that matters is who I am now, not what I will be when “will” is not even promised. It puts into perspective the flashing moment that is life, which in the grand scheme of eternity is nothing but a passing breath, just a subtle blink.

The trees of earth have seen generations and generations of humanity and they stand still in peace and contentment laughing at our hasty and anxious futility; our efforts to become immortal. Death knocks on the door of my heart waiting to come inside, as I prolong my inevitable fate I fight for what I still can hold onto.

Memento mori; in light of my certain death I see all that truly matters, it is that nothing I have now will follow me down as I'm lowered into my grave.

How we respond to the revelation of our inevitable loss of existence is the determining factor to our ability to simply exist and the depth of living we're then able to experience. Whether we live in a state of chronic existential angst, anxiety for the future, or a near delusionary hope in response to this future depends on how healthy our relationship with the reaper truly is.

Do we fear a life of monotony knowing our time is limited? Then that fear is holy, and true, let it be a sign of life for you and a means of spiritual regeneration. Sit in the absurdity of life itself, that every creature, though it did not choose life, can neither now choose to stay. Both life and death have been pre-destined for you, and your only mission is to live a life worth living in light of that.

So then why choose that which fades so quickly? Seek truth, be like the tree that laughs at mankind and instead finds peace in the futility of it all. Embrace your death, for peace comes from the feeling of using your limited time wisely, and anxiety from the precise alternative. Memento mori.

The worst possible response to the thorough revelation of death is negligence. In opting for naivety you are rejecting the greatest possible source of peace, joy, contentment, romance, energy, and spiritual vitality. It is by embracing your death, that one can truly begin to live.

This paradoxology of finding life through death is the essence of all that is spiritual and is the beginning of enlightenment. To understand death is to face the reality of humanity's inability to transcend or achieve victory upon their own strength, because everything that we attempt to build will be swept away by time and decay.

How does one begin with a concept of such magnitude, especially after following such a severe topic like death. Isn't that exactly our goal here? It's to embrace life and all of its absurdities and complications, it's how we can talk about the severity and reality of our death and immediately speak of the joy and beauty of humanity despite. This is exactly the duality and beauty of mankind.

It is our fragility that makes us so beautiful, like a firework that lasts only a moment that becomes eternalized in our memories, it is the faint and distant memories of our youth that we constantly look back on no matter how long ago it was, we miss the people we may have lost to death and regret not spending more time with them reminiscing on all the beautiful moments we once regarded as mundane; and they linger on our minds, resurfacing in the moments of now just as much as they did back then. It is in knowing that a moment is destined to fade, that brings it so much joy, so much beauty, so much gratitude and eternalizes it within our spirits forever.

In fact, our physical life here on this earth would not be so beautiful if it were eternal. Our excitement fades with time, we're ungrateful creatures who don't know how to live presently, and so it is in our mortality that makes our lives so urgently worth living.

It should light a fire deep within your chest that shouts you out of your seat that your time is limited! It screams “Listen to me! Do not forget my voice! You are a mortal and your destiny is to die! What will you do with the short time that you have been gifted? Will you sit and wallow in your despair? Will your tears become a pool of misery for you to drown in? Or will you fan the flame within and use it to light humanity into a blaze that sings of its certain demise in both tragic beauty, and hysterical joy? Get up! Sing! Shout! Create! Build! Believe!”

It is the constant meditation of our fragility that keeps us in a state of humility which is the perfect soil for seeds of joy to flourish in. It reminds us to hold tight to who we have now, because there will be a moment when we are no longer able to hold them as we once did; only in our dreams and fading, foggy memories.

It is precisely in this moment, through the nurturing of the spiritual flame produced as a result of this friendship and affiliation with death that produces a near ecstatic kind of joy. A freedom that can only be described as the complete and utter surrender to the unseen forces of existence.

Instead, I walk through the fields of life in this garden we call existence. I stroll through and carefully admire all of that which was created for me to enjoy and not for me to control. Why stress about that which I have no responsibility for? I leave the stress to God, instead I am here to tend to the garden he has entrusted to me. Death to my ego!

I will laugh as I tumble and collapse when running down bright green hills past rushing streams that flow down into valleys of beauty that God has given me eyes to see. I will bathe in the ponds that were created far before I breathed my first breath! I will scream and shout as the creator giggles alongside me and we laugh together in harmony!

I will sit and watch the sunset on the mountain top as the flights of birds in the distance put into perspective how vast the sky truly is. The sky will bleed into the night and put on a display that even the most modern camera could not even begin to capture, and earth's greatest poet could never begin to even describe! I will sit and smile widely like a dumb little child unable to contain himself, and my God will beam back at me through the beauty of his very own creation!

Joy is not the dopaminergic surge of excitement we experience when we gratify our fleeting fleshy desires. Instead joy is the culmination of a wide prism of spiritual pleasures. Pleasure that breaks the confines of human understanding and supersedes all possible explanation and causation for. It is only possible to attain and experience joy through the rejection of self, and rejecting the desire for animalistic and instant gratification.

Put yourself in your proper place as a mortal. This is not your domain, nor is it your story. This life is a garden for you to walk in, tend to, and bathe in. So breathe, surrender your needs, if you knew you would not see tomorrow's sunrise what then would you do with the day you have now?

Perseverance is a concept which I myself hold extremely dear to myself. It was through the agonizing decision to reconstruct my identity after losing everything that I was able to navigate the storms of life despite my many personal existential, ideological, and even physical collapses. If I try to write intellectually, then I will fail to do what this chapter is meant to do. Because finding your true identity is not something that can be accomplished through sheer will or effort, or through intellectual reasoning or precise programming, but rather through a deep introspection, alignment, and painful daily decision to align with only that which lights your soul on fire despite the many temptations to conform to otherwise.

I often visualize the journey in my reconstruction following my series of post-existential collapses and annihilations as a young, innocent, and naive soul which is suspended in a sort of spiritual void. Attached to his body are many ropes. Each rope pulls the boy in their desired direction, completely uninterested and dismissing any potential pain it caused the boy. And oh how great the pain is that which it caused the boy. Over time the ropes gradually increased in tension and his body was unable to sustain the force. At a certain point the ropes snapped him apart in many pieces as he and his now dismembered body exploded and floated away as it would in the physics of space; the ropes then trail off to find their next victim.

For weeks I saw him lay, and day after day I could see the coals of his spirit glisten into a faint glow of orange, and eventually an ember warm enough to defrost the edges of his heart again. With it came something familiar he knew as love, or at least the grievance of the many loves he lost, which now in the bottom of this chasm he was unable to experience; only feeling their presence in memory and nostalgia.

Suddenly, cold winds began to roar all around us as he lay there paralyzed in the frozen chasms of existential demise; testing his resolve. He rushed to protect the ember of his soul and tucked it closely to his chest and I was shocked at his ability to not only move, but have a desire for anything at all.

What was it that primed his spirit to command his body to find a once impossible strength to commit an act of protection emphasizing something similar to hope. Yes, hope it was. For what did it matter to the boy whether the flame of his heart would be blown out or not? He would have objectively been better off dead, yet here he is clutching close to his chest the most worthless of things imaginable to his former self; his own life and the hope of a better future.

I watched as he laid there shivering, silently begging someone for a sweet release to no avail; and yet he still decides to shield his flame from the howling winds. All it would have taken was to release his grip on his heart, allow the flame to be blown out, and his suffering would cease forever.

But no, for several more weeks he laid, clutching onto the little flame, his body covered in snow and his eyes frozen shut. What could only be described as idiocy, or delusion, is what kept him there for all this time; clutching onto something seemingly worthless with no promise of anything. Hope, it was, and it was in these moments where he learnt how valuable it really is.

After two months of stubborn despair and idiotic hopefulness, his first ‘maybe’ was answered. The shrieking winds softened into a smoother howl, which was just enough for this little flame to bring feeling back into his paralyzed palms. Enough feeling for him to pull himself with his two arms across the frozen ground in the direction of the man who had stitched his body back together.

This was a grueling sight, one that would have you wince, cringe and desire nothing else but to look away; but it was impossible to. His legs laid dead behind him as he crawled and it seemed he'd have been better off cutting them off; dead weight they were and nothing more. They would scrape and cut as he crawled, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Every day, every hour, was this same monotonous crawl as if he'd been programmed for this very purpose, and deviation would be an impossibility. Not a thought behind the eyes once frozen shut, nothing but pure action and pitiful force. A trail of dirty blood and smeared snow behind him, and it trailed on for miles and miles.

Something about his awkward decisions spoke to me, telling me that this pilgrimage was less about destination and more about putting these chasms to shame. More about finding a lost strength for the sole purpose of his own entertainment. For the sickening reason that he simply would not accept the defeat of death until he could find the answers he's looking for.

At a certain point, he stopped, and the coals of his soul became a blaze. The once mangled boy became a man who now erupted into complete flame. And a horrid sight it was.

That boy. The boy everyone cannot help but both stare at in a paradoxical concoction of awe, envy, agony, and disgust. The boy who sees nothing but desolation around him and refuses to settle for their misery. The boy who would rather bleed out on the path to possibility, instead of allowing the sheer cold of these chasms of dread to freeze his heart solid again.

You will lose your footing. You will fall. You will suffer tragedy. You will get fired. You will lose your loved ones. Your business ventures will fail. You will be deceived by liars. You will trust someone who will take advantage of you. You will make mistakes. You will face your own death bed one day. You will fail many more times than you will ever succeed. Such is the inevitable course of life.

However, what you choose to become or do after suffering life's many inevitable tragedies is what defines the course of your existence. Suffering is inescapable, to exist is to endure suffering, however suffering in of itself is neutral. When a caterpillar sheds its mold it does not proclaim on street corners that it is losing its identity; instead it is a natural part of the path to maturity. Get up, become the spectacle people can place their hope in. Set your goal, endure every single failure, crawl onwards; blood and all.

Do not mistake your freedom for an excuse to be irresponsible, in fact it's quite the opposite. Through the revelation of your mortality, the freedom to experience a joy that surpasses physical explanations, you now have the responsibility of transmuting this new spirit into physical manifested and tangible change; not just a metaphysical ecstasy.

By failing to transmute this spiritual enlightenment into real change you become the exact philosophical glutton I described in the introduction. You have tasted and seen of the true nature of reality and indulged in its pleasure yet have refused to show the common man how to walk in those very footsteps you have etched in the desert that they are actively struggling to navigate through.

I recall the moment of exchange between Alexander the Great and Diogenes. In their brief conversation, Alexander the Great in all of his glory and prestige asked Diogenes what he could grant for him and that his wish could have no limit. Diogenes replied to the fabled conqueror, “For you to stand out of my light.”

Modern day readers rave for Diogenes, they clap and applaud his incredibly stoic decision to humiliate Alexander in the most Diogenes-like fashion possible. But in what honor is there in complete asceticism to the point of complete uselessness in every capacity to both yourself and the society you're engaged in? And what honor is there in the pursuit of conquest, pride, glory, and honor without a moment to enjoy the fruit of your labor?

Comfort and pleasure is extremely dangerous for any man that does not know how to tame their temptation. Take an incredibly ambitious man who has not yet conquered himself and offer him a well paying job, enough sex to last his lifetime, and good food. Then watch as every one of his dreams shatters and crumbles in progression. Suddenly every mission he began plotting for is too risky, suddenly he is too busy to pursue his dreams, and ultimately he is conformed to nothing more than a bystander in life.

Weak men long to be like Peter Pan, a youth who functions without a care in the world. Flying through the winds of life, toying with the rotten grown ups, messing around with his pixie play-thing who gives him magical dust that gives him superhuman capabilities. What Peter does not realize is that neglecting the very real responsibilities of life and indulging in his hedonistic desires keeps him in a perpetual state of immaturity where he is stuck in a land of make believe as a leader of boys just as lost as he is!

Instead, pursue a life led by purpose. Speak only in truth, and fight with competence over power. Build patiently and slowly, instead of constructing quickly through shady and shallow means. Analyze the flame that burns in your heart, and listen to what it whispers to you. If you had no fear, what is it that you would pursue, and how could you begin pursuing that today?

In all that you do let there be only honor and never walk down a path you would be ashamed of embodying. Enlighten the ones who are searching but do not know where to find. Lead by example, and be a leader worth following.

The greatest mistake to make in response to the very present evil, suffering, and malevolence in the world is to become a greater agent of it. Channel that energy, channel the absurdity, into building a life worth living. Become a pinnacle of hope in a hopeless and degenerate world. Lay down your desire for revenge, and become stronger than the voice that tempts you to evil, that is true strength and deserves a story of itself to be written on.

You have only two options. You either acknowledge the degraded state of mankind and their many moral atrocities and choose to fight the battle against injustice. Or you yourself become a facilitator of that very evil orchestrating in the hearts of mankind. Will you cheat your way to victory and pleasure through crime and debauchery? Or live a life of honor and virtue. One is much harder than the other, and reaps an immense reward both here and in eternity.

Why? Why open up critiquing a society that has supposedly constructed a system producing pre-determined thought patterns and immediately begin speaking on the importance of choosing purpose, joy and perseverance in light of your inevitable death and numerous inescapable tragedies?

So that I could show you what solid truth capable of substantial change is built on.

So that those revelations could produce an individual capable of true autonomous thinking, one who can present and defend novel ideas, who can not only identify falsehood but fight against it in passionate truth. One who can make a substantial difference in the circles they set foot in, one who can then ultimately pay forward the spiritual freedom they receive to the world around them.

That by understanding the truth of your humanity; the position as a fragile creature at the mercy of unseen forces, who has been gifted the miracle of consciousness and thought, you could truly begin to produce substantive thought that is truly beneficial to the spirit of mankind. Because that being now understands the true needs of humanity, in light of its tragic nature.

The ember of our soul shouts aloud and yet only echoes in ruminance throughout the corridors of our mind. Yelling aloud on the street corners of the kingdoms we have built within our heads, constructing comfortable ideological barriers intended to shield us from the warfare eternally existent on the fronts of the world we engage with on a daily basis.

It sings a symphony so beautiful, capable of lulling the angst and anxiety of the human spirit into a euphoric peace, found in melodies people are too busy to release into.

It sings of a land so lush and overgrown with ripe fruit, leaking at the seams waiting to be tasted. Of blessings that can be found in the lands men are too drunken on their own complacency, envy, and agony to travel to.

Sung by a voice so comforting, so compassionate, calling you ever deeper. It plays in the same car you step into every day, the conversations with people you unintentionally tune out of, and gets drowned out by the songs you play on repeat every day.

A symphony lost, singing of a land forgotten, from a voice forever aching to be heard. In front of the very eyes you are too afraid to open.