Be a Roman.
While living this life, live. Live as your genes, your environs, your instincts mandate. Live as your dogmas, your notions, your religions dictate. You may break free and run away, but you will not go far. You may free yourself from shackles of one kind, only to find yourself chained onto another.
You may flee but you cannot hide.
While living this life, in this body, in this world,
You have to bow down to your genes, deal with the occasional disease, wear the customary clothes, say the polite hello, work the wage paying job. You have to eat after all, and navigate the social mores. You have to go to the town to buy your grocery, raise your kid, feed your pet. You have to live this life after all.
And when your body is ravaged by a disease, when your coffers run low, when your cellar runs dry, and your enemies run amok, you have to seek solace and comfort. A religion, a god, a ritual, an abject belief, a magical penny. Yes, you have to seek comfort, for you do have to live this life after all.
And seek solace, you will, in myriad ways, theism, atheism, nihilism, altruism, capitalism. No one ‘ism’ better or worse than the other, but better or worse just for you, so you seek those that comfort you the most. Rest assured, yours is the best way, in fact the only way for you, for it is your life and you have to live your life after all.
So, while living this life, live. Live as your genes, your environs, your instincts mandate. Live as your dogmas, your notions, your religions dictate. You may break free and run away, but you will not go far.
Unless…
You break free from this very life that you lead, stand atop the peak of your thoughts and take a peek.
When this life that you lead no longer matters, your progeny, your job, your angst no longer matters.
Nothing matters then. Your genes, your environ, the rituals, the religions, the dogmas, the ‘isms’ all irrelevant, for then, and only then it’s no longer about this life that you lead after all.
