Sand castles and every other object or edifice built from the soft beach sands are always magnificent and awesome sights to behold. You just have to marvel at how such beauty was made from the sand. One thing known to everyone however, is the fragile and short lifespan of such edifice. Asides their pictures on cameras and smart phones, they live until the beach water floods them, or until a strong wind blows them, or even a stamp from someone’s feet.
Doesn’t this perfectly illustrate the day to day and life pursuit of many people?
If whatever you are living for, or what you make your primary and major life pursuit can be destroyed in a day- by a law, by an economic recess, a drunk driver, fire or other natural disasters, then we can rightly conclude that you are living your life building a sandcastle.
A question I’ve been plagued with is the question of what kind of life is worth living. What is worth living for?
On the top of the list of what people are living for is survival, to earn a living, have food, clothing and shelter. No one can fault that because, if you can’t sustain a livelihood, either yours or your family’s, the thought of living for a purpose will hardly cross your mind.
The motive of wanting to build a life and future for your family, earn a living that will provide them with the basics of life as a worthy cause can also pass for something worth living for. If you don’t invest in the future of the most immediate people to you, then I don’t know what else you are living for.
Next to this is joining the rat race of being one of the 1% of the world’s rich population, the wealthy and famous. But then, are wealth and affluence worth living for?
This question definitely doesn’t come with a straight Yes or No answer, considering the frailty of life and the uncertainty of tomorrow; amassing riches won’t be a cause worth dedicating an entire life to because who knows what will happen when death comes? Or if you think that is an extreme thought, what is left of a wealthy man if his riches are stripped off him by whatever (and we know the list of the whatever is endless).
But then, let us also consider the wealthy individuals who dedicated their riches to charitable causes, who gave to the poor, fed the hungry, built schools and sponsored many to receive education, who gave to researching cures for diseases or even paid for people to receive good health care.
Life indeed is not a result of how long we live – otherwise the world’s greatest impact would have been ranked by amount of years people lived. Life is not ranked by how much you have – of course that is well reckoned with in the society, but if that is the measure of a life well lived, the Mother Theresa of Calcutta won’t make the record of the greatest individual that have walked the surface of the earth.
The aim of this post isn’t to give a list of the right or wrong things to spend our lives on, but to challenge you to consider what your pursuits are now and sincerely ask yourself, “Am I building an edifice that will stand the test of time regardless of the weather or situation or am I just building a Sandcastle-a cause that can be wiped off overnight?”
For one, I know that a selfish cause isn’t one to live for (chop alone, die alone lifestyle). But a life given is one to live for (by this I mean a life lived for the sake of contributing/helping/giving to others)
Here is my advice-
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Find a purpose for living.
Purpose gives life to any life, living or activities. It bears an immortalizing ability that when the activity is long ended it is never forgotten, at least its effect will still live on.
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Add a purpose to building a sandcastle.
If you have to build a “SandSay to have the pictures taken, framed and auctioned to raise money to build a school. That way, when the Sandcastle is long washed down the shore, the purpose will still be alive in the individuals who would have benefited from the education scheme.
Live for a purpose, a living purpose.
Thank you for reading. Kindly leave a comment.
Read also;
WHAT IS MY PURPOSE IN LIFE? – Emmanuel Iren
What exactly is MAKING IMPACT?
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