it is not about you.

it is about the things that you do. in a hundred years, people will not remember that you liked hot chocolate, or that you failed a test in the third grade. they will not remember your favorite song or your thoughts, your lovers or your clothes. most likely, they will not even remember your name. people do not especially care about other people-they care about events. and that is the way to make yourself remembered, through your actions. i forget her name, but there was a woman who spent her entire life as a washerwoman and a miser, living extremely cheaply, and then at thee end of her life she donated tens of thousands of dollars to charity. think about this logically: your personal comfort is mathematically less important than your good deeds, because it affects only you.

generosity and willingness to make sacrifices is not a "saintly" or "special" thing, but a necessity. it is the reason we are alive. well, not exactly. there is no reason we are alive. actually, the human race is a flaw in nature. only a single, middle-of-the-chain mammal, we ignore the ecosystem and decide that we are above everything else. but i digress-the only way to make up for our...sins, i suppose you could call them, is to improve the world, to strive to become the "paragon of animals". most creatures do not either help or hurt the earth, but simply exist in it. this is all very well for them, but humanity cannot exist this way. we insist that we are here for a greater purpose, a greater cause. we move forward. we cannot help it, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. to deny our struggles would be lying. what we must do instead is make sure that we are indeed moving toward something good, and not simply choosing what is convenient at the moment. that would be pointless and harmful. be careful.