"...What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary--property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life--don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.

It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart--and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

A few weeks ago, I lost one of my favorite rings. I left it in a Target bathroom and did not realize it until an hour later when I got back to my dorm. So forgetful, I'm terrible. In a panic, I wrote up a letter to the people on my floor, as I thought I may have lost it in my building, and taped it to the bathroom doors. Humorously my friends asked about it, and I told them the story. Within days, I admitted to myself it must've been lost at Target, and after mourning the loss of my ring, I moved on.

Anyways, let's talk about what is real. Well, a good first question to ask might be: what are you aiming at? After all, why would you aim at, and pursue, something that isn't real? I loved my ring, and it was real. Now, let's take an abstract back-step. How about how the ring made me feel? Or how I viewed myself as a result of having the ring? Were those things real? Perhaps.

Perhaps what matters is how I act in regards to them. I liked the ring--and while wearing it I certainly felt cool!--but I could've just as easily decided not to get upset about it all, and moved on immediately. I probably would've done that if I had left, say, a piece of paper in that Target bathroom. It's just as real, but we act differently because we judge different objects through a lens of value. Things are worth more than others, even though everything is real. So, amidst everything about you that is real, what is most valuable, divine, or eternal? What is most real? What will never change?

I say real because we can observe that to be able to feel a thing's surface on our palm is not the sole qualifier for a thing to be real. Can you hold happiness in your hands? Or courage? Or fear? Can you hold paper after it is burnt? Ashes thrown into the sea? Our world once eaten by the sun? Where did goodness originate? We know very well one person did not pull it from an alternate realm and into ours. Certainly not with their hands. But is goodness not real?

And if you do something good, is that not real? Even if you think only the action is real, is the action itself not good, say, because it is not bad, and also not neutral (if that exists, even)? Had someone returned my ring to me, would my joy, their action, its innate goodness (or innate badness, for you Machiavellian types), and any other reaction or alteration of experience not have been real?

Perhaps the question should be, of the things that are real, what should we pursue? Now we return to the question posed in the beginning, what are you aiming at? We see that there are things like rings, as well as medicine and food, and even things like pet goldfish walkers and treadmill bicycles (please, look it up). Physical things can be judged on a scale of value.

Almost just as obviously, conceptual qualities can be judged as well. Goodness and evil cannot be held in the palm of one's hand, yet are felt more sincerely through the heart than any other sensation. Would you rather have money for food, or the confidence to ask your crush out on a date? One you can hold in your hand, the other leads... to holding someone else's hand (awe).  

Yet, unless you were starving, I'm willing to bet most of y'all choose confidence! Or if not, what about momentary happiness, or drama, or novelty, or exploration, or adventure, or fun, over money for food?

The point is, we can pursue both physical and conceptual goals, so what is the proper balance, the proper ratio, the proper pursuit? Was it justifiable for me to cry endlessly over my ring, lying in a pit of despondent separation from the silver finger band that deposited worth to my life? Well, if I placed that kind of meaning upon the ring, maybe. However, as I said earlier, if it had the same worth (to me) as, say, a piece of paper, I could've turned around without batting an eye. This brings me to the meaningful attributions we make to ourselves. From here, we are able to discern what is actually ours.

I say ours because I am going to reveal to you what nobody can take away. Solzhenitsyn has already elaborated this for us. Solzhenitsyn was a commander for the Soviet Union in the early twentieth century who, after sending a letter to a friend complaining about the insufficiency of its internal mechanisms, was swallowed into the forced labor camp system for decades. In his book you can read more about Article 58, a criminal code designed to arrest "political" prisoners, people who complained about the state in any way, directly or implicitly.

If you think having to hear fascists speak is bad, think about not being able to speak at all without imprisonment if the fascists came into power (hahaha, aka, look out for the people who don't want others to talk). Anyways, Solzhenitsyn outlines what to pursue after realizing what he could take with him to prison, and what he'd take after death. "Do not pursue what is illusionary--property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night."

Property and position. Don't pursue them! Well, of course, you must to an extent, if you are to make it so for yourself that "you don't freeze in the cold and...thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides." We need enough so that we don't die, and of course, thriving with the fruit and color of the world is thriving with the divinity of pleasure. And not everyone will have it "confiscated in one fell night." But of course, where will all this be when you die? There is no escaping death, we are born in it's shackles. What about when everyone else dies? What about when the world is burned to a crisp by our ever-expanding sun?

How real will they be?

What of goodness? When the sun devours us, where will goodness be? Where it once rested, in the hearts of us all--alongside evil, mind you--and throughout the actions of benevolence, it was alive. Yet, it did not need humanity to live.

So I ask when there is nothing you can hold in your hands, will goodness be real?

Then, what of realness should you pursue? How eternal and divine a person must one want to be? Well, if you don't believe good things last forever because you don't believe goodness doesn't die, then I ask, what of evil? Is evil not permanent? Can we erase Nazism from history? Can we erase what makes Nazism evil from the depths of conception? Is history negotiable? Is fact illusionary? Absolutely not. Evil is pure and real.

We are constituents to both good and evil, who live in a constant reconciliation, ensuring we don't ostracize our evil nature--so that it doesn't kill us in and of itself, remember that the people who committed the worst actions in history (for the most part) thought they were doing good but had they taken the time to admit evil rested in their heart, they would've clarified to themselves their own intrinsic good--and in turn, warp our goodness. So, if we are both good and evil, what is the pursuit to adopt?

"If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all." Ah yes, if physical matters have satisfied physical needs, and your physiological dignity is intact, what more should you concern yourself with? How about reconciling the greatest battle known to history? The one within your own heart?

For, if matters of good and evil are not attended to, they don't become any less real. Our experiences are always real. So, before our evil bleeds from our hearts and into the lives of others, and perhaps even into their hearts too--if you communicate effectively enough--I would advocate we adopt the pursuit of good. For, when we pass, goodness remains. And perhaps it is best if we act in such a manner than when we pass, our goodness remains as well.

The only way to ensure we do so is believing that when we pass, and our goodness does not remain because it was never alive when we were, evil takes a steady breath with every spoken remembrance of our name.

So, if there is no more food for you to eat, water to drink, even shades to cool under, seas to swim, dances to dance, or songs to write, then concern yourself with matters of yourself. For, why should you envy those who have more than you in a physical sense now, if after you both die, the spoils go to the rich, and it is only your character that could buy a ticket to heaven? "Our envy of others devours us most of all," bending our pursuit towards goodness in a direction that eternalizes our lacking of the highest value.

"Rub your eyes and purify your heart." I hope that we can see clearly, or clearer, now. Even if I've made no sense to you, you reader, what and whoever you are, perhaps an old friend, or a new one, an acquaintance... an old lover... a new one --or a friend of a parent!--or my parent, it does not matter more than the reason within the sense I've made to myself. If I keep myself out of trouble--or at least keep you all thinking that that's what I'm doing (haha)--by aligning my action to my spoken self-prophecy then perhaps I will truly have purified my heart. I will fail from moment to moment, but I will not stop trying.

A pursuit is just that, a pursuit. Authentic effort and resilience constitute the goodness one continually seeks and searches to emulate till death. I cannot be solely good, but I am capable of good actions if I put the effort forth, if I don't stop trying to make that the product of my paradoxical and oxymoronic nature. For where I derive my desire is my intention, my character my action, my heart's condition my own. My eternity is my history. I cannot undo my life's actions and the goodness, present or absent within it, that will transcend the bounds of time.

"...--and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well." Who really loves you? What really loves you? If goodness itself lives within all of our hearts with evil as its neighbor, the friends you make are the soldiers you pledge alongside as you face an eternal battle between the absolute and divine forces. With whom will you fight for good?

It will surely not cease to exist without us. It does not need us to exist. However, it does need us if it is to be experienced. Who is to experience it? Just wait till you have a child, then you'll understand where your character is most immediately experienced. Just wait till they grow to have friends. Just wait till they graduate from school. Just wait till they're just like you.

Just wait for you to realize that everything you do in life matters because time forgets nothing, and experience itself is the least discriminatory of realities because nature (human composition, too), its food and drink, is the least discriminatory of anything.

"...after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory."

If you were to die now, would your character be enough to sustain goodness after your death? What if you were to be taken from this life now, with all its possessions, what would you have? What would you have, if you only had yourself? Reader, what doesn't die?