A Blaze for Glory. Sort of.

"You gotta aim for something in life, you know!"

"Why don't you do something useful with your life?"

But how do we define what is worth striving for?

In order to succeed at anything, we must give our all, our 100 %. We must allow it to take over our body, our mind, our life—everything. We must bring this aspiration to the forefront of our lives, elevating it until everything else fades into the background static—including our friends, family and other dreams.

But once we have succeeded, we end our own lives. We have charged headlong into the solitary goal box of inertness, as Charlie Gordon noted as his intelligence began to backslide. Our program is complete, and we now have nothing to do, as Sonny remarked in the closing scenes of I, Robot. The struggle for glory, the perspiration, the joyfulness in the journey to the realisation of our dream, the driving force behind our lives is destroyed in the fulfilment of itself and is been replaced with a dreary, lifeless, infinite, eternal boredom.

Is it even worth embarking on this meaningless chase after the wind?

Even if we top the pop charts, become the world’s richest person, toil in hardship for the survival of others, make a name for ourselves, eventually, what we have done fades away, turns back to dust just as we do, and people begin to say “What was that guy’s name again?”