Well just how to you be “the best you can be?” #life #motivation ##duty

"Pizzaonia Emerging" Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction, Curator

It is hard to get beyond the notion that eventually the amount of sacrifice one is willing to endure defines the quality of any worthwhile experience.

This will run counter to the ideas of those who are engaged in the mass selling of pleasure and comfort that now engulfs most of the western world and parts of Pizzaonia, but these interludes of pleasure are merely restful respites that help us to focus on what needs to be done.

Be it religion, science or any serious belief system, they are all inevitably measured by the amount of voluntary sacrifice one is asked to accept. This is not the way western culture chooses to define itself.

And yet, when you check the slogans of social media and the bumper sticker mentality of our time, all you hear and read is –“be the best you can be.”

Well just how to you be “the best you can be?” Usually it is with hard work and sacrifice – there is that word again, sacrifice. Look at the great religions of the world in general and Christianity, in particular, and you see service and sacrifice to others as the key to salvation.

The question is what happened on the road to Utopia? Well, for one we redefined sacrifice only to apply to one’s selfish and personal goals.

Sacrifice that would benefit you was the new mantra. Granted, once you attained your personal goals and the wealth you dreamed that would come with it; you would begin to help others. Does it work that way? You be the judge.