I guess there isn't any particular reason per se. Procreation? Sure, but that's not my question. Why do we live? What's the point?
Is it money? Wealth? Power? That's not a reason. Money and wealth is no excuse to pull your finger off the trigger and let the hammer back.
The point, perhaps, is happiness. If it's not happiness that you strive for, your just as well lost deep in the Grey Wood, where the only solace among all that accumulated wealth is a shotgun shell. There's no life force in a dollar bill. Maybe i what it can purchase in the barest fundamental sense; food, shelter, water, but not in the money itself. It's empty.
Happiness is everything. Happiness and awe and wonder. Learning begets wonder, and in that knowledge is one of the awesome intangibles in life. Knowledge. You can't put your hand on it. Yes, you can pick up books, feel their weight and run fingers down their spines and across their faces, but that's not knowledge. Knowledge is a knowing, something that does not require a book or website, only needs that to reference. It's somewhat of a personal ideal. I know my birthday. I know my mother's favorite meal to cook for dinner. I know the light on my street will turn green exactly after the cross-street's turns red. I know that Paris is the capitol of France. I know I can ride the trains there without paying. For the most part anyways. I know that I run the slight chance of being questioned for a ticket exiting some stations. I know that when I learn something new a certain feeling washes over me in varying degrees depending on it's gravity. It's wonder.
And happiness? I don't know what that is. Not definitively. I only know what it feels like to me on those rare occasions that it taps me on the shoulder. It feels like Tinkerbell dust. It's a tingling in the skin like a waterballoon about to burst. It's not a hunger, it's satisfaction. It's wonder. So pursue happiness, I say. It breeds beauty. Travel. Discover. Learn. Fill your life with a feast for the eyes and the mind. It's not luxury. That's lazy. Be happy. Let go of stress that does not bring that simple reward. Happiness.
"What a waste," my father said to me. "What go to college, why go through all that if not to get a job, to start a family, join the workforce. Why even bother?"
"To learn," I told him. "It was wonderful."
"Does it haunt you? To waste all that?"
"The only thing that haunts me is immortality." And in that, I see the temptation of power. It's recognized. But so is greatness.
