The Hierarchy of Motivation
It is apparent to me that in life, there is a hierarchy of motivation. Your motivations in life effect what you pursue, and in time what you pursue becomes your central point of origin. If we were truly enlightened beings, we would execute the divine will in a pristine state of detachment and outcome independence. Our joy would be continuous and ever-flowing and we would find meaning and satisfaction within each passing moment. However, the illusions of this world are convincing and immense. Few of us execute actions without a central guiding vision of what we are after. There is a hierarchy of motivations, some more noble than others.
It is crucial that you avoid the big traps. These lie in drawing motivation from the wrong sources. Motivations can be separated into two categories: what you want to have, and who you want to become. Drawing purpose from what you want to have is a universally inferior place from which to center your personality. Firstly, there is immense arrogance in thinking that you know what you want, or that you know what will make you happy now or in the future. Second, this line of thinking creates a highly flawed metric for success as outcomes are binary: you either get what you are after, or you do not. Who is to say that once you get what you want you will keep it? Your state of joy becomes very fragile as it is built upon everything going your way all the time. Perhaps you are motivated by having a larger house, a beautiful wife, a more handsomely compensated job. All of these can elude you and if you spend your days chasing these outcomes you will drive yourself to misery as failure to attain equates to wasted effort.
Alternatively, you can be motivated to become more skilled at your chosen profession, to be the best potential spouse, to develop the virtues from which prosperity flows. These goals are centered around who you become.
Desire is best allocated to the pursuit of virtue rather than the pursuit of gain. The metric of success should not be based upon the externalities of your prosperity but rather the strength of your character. Happiness should be placed in variables influenced by the value of your efforts, not the benefits they accrue. Finally, the person you become is something you keep. Nobody can take that away from you (in this life at least).
The person you become cannot be purchased, sold, bartered nor traded. It is decided by your actions every waking moment. You define it, or perhaps you reveal it by chipping away at a block of marble to uncover a magnificent sculpture. Are you adding to who you are? Or is life a quest to reveal who you are by selectively removing all that is unnecessary.
Within every action lies inaction. In order to do one thing, you simultaneously refrain from doing the other. Only God can perform many actions at once which is why humans can never define God. As such, with every action we simultaneously gain knowledge of who we are by giving something up: an act of removal.
So, in our quest of life we should bear in mind who we want to become. We should take pride and joy when we must give up what we have today to become who we must tomorrow. Sacrifices that seem large in the short term will be inconsequential when weighed against the magnitude of who we forge ourselves to be.
Virtue, strength, resilience, and faith are the precious gifts of life. From virtue flows prosperity, but those who chase prosperity alone are most vulnerable to the whims of fate.
