It’s Worth It

The day you were born you were given a death sentence.

You were born into a world you will never fully comprehend. You were born to parents who were more able or less able to guide you through life’s beginnings. You were born into a certain place into a certain society where certain things you have no control over will affect you every single day of your life. You were born into a fragile body that’s vulnerable to every kind of harm and suffering.

And one day, through injury, accident, or the slow working of time, that body is going to die.

No one knows what happens then, though nearly everyone claims to know.

And every day between now and the day you meet your end, you’re going to live this life.

No, let’s make it more personal: you’re going to live your life. Starting from where you are. Starting from whatever particular situations or entanglements you find yourself in. Starting from here, wherever here is for you. Like in the ancient joke about the stagecoach in a small English town whose driver pulls over to ask a man in the street the way to London.

And the man says, “I don’t know the way sir, but if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

But you are starting from here. And the more you rail against that, and the more you accuse your past of ruining the present, and the more you lacerate yourself for your own (no doubt considerable) stupidity, the worse it’s going to be for you.

It’s going to hurt. It’s going to be scary. It’s going to have moments where you’ll feel like it was a mistake ever to have been born.

And I don’t know anything about that. I’m not here to hand out candy-easy answers. I’m here because there’s a part of me that’s terrified of reality, wishes it would all go away, and wants to hide under my bed and wait till the bad dream is over.

Maybe there’s a part of you that feels the same way. A part that wants to hide, avoid, and shrink away from reality. A part that looks at the world and sees nothing but a massive instrument of torture. A part that thinks the best way to respond to the world is to become as cramped and narrow as possible, because then there’s less of you to be hurt.

And who can blame that part of you? All of its complaints are true, or half-true, at least.

But for all that, you’re still here. But for all that, there’s some part of you that hasn’t given up. But for all that, a piece of you clings to life with all the love in the universe and whispers in your ear with a voice that so often gets drowned out in the everyday horror: It’s worth it.

There’s no proving it. There’s no arguing it. There’s no tallying up the pros and cons of Being in an infinite calculus that renders the precise value of life before the eyes of your critical consciousness.

Because it’s deeper than that. It’s in every cell in every organ of your body. It’s written into the fabric of your consciousness. It’s carved with the chisel of eternity into thestructure of your bones. It’s worth it.

It’s worth it to face the reality of your own life fully and in the clear consciousness that you won’t be able to avoid pain and suffering. It’s worth it to forgive the wrongs you’ve suffered, and even the wrongs you’ve inflicted. It’s worth it to struggle and scrape by to further the cause of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

I don’t know why goodness, truth, and beauty get grouped together in this way. But I do know wiser men than me have insisted the three are connected. And while right here, right now, I have my doubts about goodness and truth, I can’t doubt beauty.

The experience of beauty redeems everything. When I encounter beauty I may feel many different things, but there’s one constant among all of them: gratitude. An intense, disinterested gratitude that we live in a world such that this beauty is allowed to exist. Gratitude that I am the kind of being that is capable of perceiving and appreciating this beauty. Gratitude, if I’m lucky, that brings me to cleansing tears that wash away all the unrealities I’ve put between myself and this precious world.

Of course, beauty comes in many forms, and some of those forms can call up intense and contradictory emotions. But there is no experience of beauty that doesn’t call forth this feeling of gratitude.

And where that spontaneous gratitude exists, it’s no longer possible to doubt the value of existence.

It’s worth it.