Reply to Life is Sacred (Aged 20)

Written an hour after the last entry.

Life is sacred, but it is also hard.  I do believe that I have come to respect its sanctity, but I feel no closer in learning how to either live it or honor it.
I think that living is the hardest thing in the world.  I think that it is one thing to die for your cause, but it is an infinitely harder thing to live for it.  Dying for a cause is a one-time deal: the pain and the sacrifice ends when you drive the life force from your body in martyrdom.  But to live . . . to wake up each morning and fight, to fight alone, to lose what you had once cared about, to expose your utter passion to the scrutiny of others and lay yourself bare . . . that is an onerous task.  That to me represents greater commitment than a momentary sacrifice.
It also represents to me a greater contribution:  you can only die once, but you can fight in countless battles.  You can also die an idealogue, but you have to live as a practical person.  Part of the pain of living is accepting compromise, accepting the gray areas, accepting that others matter, that others’ opinions matter, that there is more in this world than just yourself and your ideals.  It takes more courage to live than to die.