“I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.
Adult. You have become adult.”

Don’t settle for the mediocrity that surrounds us, the mundane, the grey. There are no true consequences, periods without comfort, but in the end the only true lasting impact you leave on the earth will be a whispered memory on your great great grandkids lips. Strive for mundane if you would like, but what is the point? So your kids will never have to feel the extremes of sadness that come with the darkest of times? So their kids won’t?

There is the often quoted Harlan Ellison phrase, in full above, that includes the phrase “without sadness, there can be no happiness”. That is true of all emotions in life. Without the endorphin highs of the extremes and the seeking of experiences that milk that feeling from the world around us life becomes a nonfactor. Spend 80 years living in comfort and die without knowing the extent of the human experience, without having actually lived.

Why ignore all the potential out there for generational wealth, for comfort? To live a life of grey in a world so bright that you can only visit once is a waste, but do as you wish.