What is the first word that comes to you when someone asks you what is one value you hold dear to your personality? Some would state their core values like honesty, politeness, kindness, assertiveness, forbearance, resilience, and tact while others would refer to non-material relations such as my family, my friends, etc. 

They could also include their aims, ideals, aspirations, or some lessons that need to keep in my mind as a result of their life experience. For some, it could be an exploration of self-identity and for others, it could be finding the world in others and managing it. There is no exhaustive list of answers to such questions and if there is, then it is as vague and general as the possibilities outlined here. 

Furthermore, a person's answer may evolve over time with her changing priorities. It is only natural for we are constantly learning new things , passing through new experience whether through other's or own's mistake. 

So, for the longest time, I had varying answers to this question, all of which now seemed so vacant and lost. Any answers pertaining to aspiration, aim, family , values are rendered hollow if the premise on which they stand is itself not given foremost importance. Just like how you may appreciate a plant's beauty in its leaves, flowers, growth, but if you fail to notice the reason as to why seed began to sprout , why the roots developed and supported the structure, all you would have is an incomplete momentary gratification seeking understanding.

We all are guided solely to wherever we are, solely because we exist. If we were dead, we wouldn't be living. This is such a simple statement yet we often tend to gloss over the fact by failing to appreciate the weight of its implications. This fact begs us to question the reality that stands before us and our place in it. But the moment we wonder about our existence at the most fundamental level, bereft of the materialistic and social relations we find ourselves in, where exactly does that leave us?

The first and the final question, that has followed humanity like slithering snake coiling around the branches of an ever-growing tree of life, intent to either swallow it or get streched out to its demise in the process itself . The life here being, not a state of any mortal creature but the very process of this expansion of life, growth, impregnation of the nature and cosmos itself.

It is arguable that maybe we don't need to think about this much. Maybe we are fine just avoiding the responsibility of caring for the very thing that denotes our position in this array of temporal sequence of souls in multi-faceted situations. Of course, you can think that way.

 As a homosapien, the finest species of human being so far, you have definitely twin rights of avoidance and indulgence. But the question is, are you satisficed with exercise of those rights simply because you are entitled to? Let me put it in simplistic terms . 

Are you justified in forsaking your responsibility of saving a drowning child , if you are capable of saving her, simply because you aren't legally obliged to and have no fear of sanction? 

But this could be seen as a bad example for it involves a high conflict of one's morality. So let's  try a much simpler and convenient setting. 

If you were offered a choice to get to deeper ends of yourself, by going through a introspective process, would you feel happy in declining it simply because of you having found comfort in superficial? Would a plant , which has found its nutrients just few feet below ground and refuse to extend its roots, even when there is no more possibility of rain by providence, survive for long? And if it does survive somehow , then would it be still living or just refusing to be dead? 

Every person on this earth must breath and eat to keep on going and if she succeeds, then she is indeed labelled as a living person. But is fulfilment of simple needs just enough to last till when same needs arises again, a living? If so, then surely, the fear of hell that priests of world seem to have indoctrinated them into , must be a pleasant place. Without even acknowledging, these people already seem to be long for staying an ignorant participant of this infinite loop until the final breath.

There are many people who live, eat, breath, socialize, marry, reproduce, rear children, and die. Earth has housed them since time immemorial and continues to extend its hospitality ever the same but it would be wrong to assume that all of the people who died actually lived. In a way, they didn't really ever die , for dying requires living. Their bodies lived for certain time and then turned to mere corpse dust .

Their lives just like their descendants' and ancestors were as meaningless as trying to make a person who put his head under the ground to find a false relief that her distress is gone when she is simply avoiding it no better than a ostrich. At least, we can excuse the unintelligent animal who can't even speak or begin to cajole itself to our fictional complexities that we pride ourselves on but an intelligent creature like human being, has no excuse.

So people flock like birds, children cry , adults sigh, old people whine and they die. But their lives remain of anything but of fleeting importance to those who happen to have associated for them, who get ensnared in same fate again, despite their half-hearted resolutions to do better and the cycle continues. Most humans die , filling nothing more than useless space on earth with their graves and ashes for their descendant to remember and know they must also engage in some frivolusity as well, attaching a sense of pride in being dissociated from quest for true meaning of their being.

That is why, it is vital to understanding what exactly is the reason for your existence? Once you find that reason, you find the value towards which your life can gravitate until you come upon something that makes enough sense to let you know when and where to diverge again. But what can be said of those who have simply joined this bandwagon of picking values here and there, as deemed sociable, as trendy , as convenient for short-end hedonistic pleasures.

It is important to remember that never once I am advising you or recommending you to adopt some kind of standard morality or even avoid hedonistic pleasures. Be consistent. Being consistent means not only following a set pattern of rules that you carve once you think you have explored your psyche and soul but also consistency in accepting that you are inconsistent.

You can be contradictory , you can be inconsistent , you can be consistent but whatever the value that you have chosen to cherish or uphold, your conscience and instincts must be accepting of it. You can even be a hypocrite . Who am I to judge? Who is anyone to judge the fact that you judge others while not accepting of those follies when committed by yourself? 

No! That is not my duty. That is your soul's duty. You must ask whether I am fine being a hypocrite? The self-acceptance should be the standard towards which you place your morality against.

If you desire to be kind, then don't be kind because of the expectation that you will be rewarded, you will be deemed good in the court of divine, will get heaven , will get a better conscience than rest, will do it for that is right thing to do.

 No! Discard all notions of common morality and look into yourself. Ask yourself? Is being kind the best I can choose to follow for my life, regardless of flickering tide of opinions or conveniences? Choose a value not because of its consequences or popularity or need but because you feel connected to it at base and fundamental level. Be so because you think this is what I feel is the right path to follow, regardless of anything. Indeed. You are a human so your subconscious will be affected by many external factors and how you are raised up. 

That is indeed a sorrowful fact that we must remain prisoners of our own cages and the only way to escape it lies in finding a key somehow in that prison itself, no matter how hard and unnecessary it may seem to those who were never locked in it. But you still have to try. You can never be free of all influences but you can try and practice.

Naturally, one might think the notion of self-acceptance being the standard is a dangerous tool for what if one feels the wrong desire to be right , having been raised by people who may hold dangerous ideas, ideas that could cause havoc in society if be allowed to rein free in people's mind?

For example, a child of a drug-trafficking parent who has been taught whole life about the supremacy of money through any means , whether by supplying drugs to people which may end up destroying their life? Will I still be so able to confidently propose the standard of 'self-acceptance' or for a better term 'Doctrine of Greatest Compatibility'? Would that kid not require some kind of moral sense stick into his head by juvie through harsher means if allowed to act on his parent's path?

But that is where you are wrong. You must understand my words carefully.

"Don't accept idea because of the consequence or its popularity or goodness or badness. and let your conscience be the judge of what to adopt."  That is the precise thing. You have to consider consequences but that shouldn't be a determinant of acceptance but only play a role in guiding your thinking. 

Just like how suggestions by interns might help a great lawyer in looking up something but reliance on it to win case may promise failure, similarly the idea must be accepted in vaccum save conscience but to get a grasp of it, preliminary criteria of consequences, reason behind that thought or value promotion etc. are completely acceptable.

The child can certainly be made aware of law, different ethical considerations that society or majority deems fit to uphold but whether she chooses to uphold , rest on his conscience. A criminal may knows what he is doing is wrong yet he does it anyway . Why?  The consequences are irrelevant in "Doctrine of acceptance" and only play role as far as in one of the factors to be considered for formulation and thought.

And so I say to you again, search , go deep into your soul. It will refrain. It will struggle to get away like a new fish when taken out of pond from the fishermen's basket, attempts it best to go back to where it was, the abode of peace so unexpectedly interrupted. The idea of being away from pond that fish didn't even know was and simply existed in, pains and prompts it more to go back in, regardless of anything. 

But just like fisherman can't sustain itself by letting the fish return to its home out of kindness, you can also not show mercy on the tides of pain that will swept you in , once you perturb the delicate soul , which has been living in constant fantasy of never  to be touched so far. But that fantasy will certainly become a reality for your soul , if you too stay locked in this chain of blind conformism to vice and virtue without an iota of effort into their comprehension and connection with your soul and existence.

The choice is yours, the search is yours and the answers is also yours. Regardless of what comes out, you are allowed fully and freely to deliberate on everything before . Whether you choose to study everything or exclude it all on blind say, you must be aware of your choice . Staying ignorant when possible to not be so, is just as much as picking an answer to the question that had arisen in your heart as much as determination you took to find answers.

So go, find your answers, find out whether you embrace joy, sadness, evil , good-all simple words and labels of morality you must be prepared to be casted upon by the world dependent on choice you take.

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