Where you go in life will depend on how you see things and who and what you feel connected to (your family, your community, your country, mankind, the whole ecosystem, everything). You will have to decide to what extent you will put the interests of others above your own, and which others you will choose to do so for. That's because you will regularly encounter situations that will force you to make such choices. While such decisions might seem too erudite for your taste, you will make them either consciously or subliminally, and they will be very important. For me personally, I now find it thrilling to embrace reality, to look down on myself through nature's perspective, and to be an infinitesimally small part of the whole. My instinctual and intellectual goal is simply to evolve and contribute to evolution in some tiny way while I'm here and while I am what I am. At the same time, the things I love most--my work and my relationships--are what motivate me. So, I find how reality and nature work, including how I and everything will decompose and recompose, beautiful--though emotionally I find the separation from those I care about difficult to appreciate. #principleoftheday