The Easy Life vs. The Valuable Life

There are a lot of rebel-nonconformist-cynics out there who shun anything and everything that has any kind of popularity or weight with the masses.  They think themselves hip and unique.  They think themselves bold, exciting, and superior.  They see themselves as going against the grain, maybe even as fighting the system, but it's really not hard to do that.  Our society is freedom-based; you're allowed to shun everything without any real repercussion.  Millions do so every day.  So to think yourself better than most simply by taking easy advantage of a value already set up and enforced by the very system against which you thrash-- this is a fabulous blunder.

It's easy to be a hater.  It's also easy to blindly do everything that's expected of you.  You can go to the schools you're told to, take the jobs you're told to, marry the person you're told to, have the kids you're told to, buy the house you're told to, and never really think at all.  You can meet all the surface measures of American success.  But how much will it mean to you?

No, friends, the truly difficult thing to do in life is to find something to believe in and to commit to it.  It's easy to have no ideals, to be good one day, bad another, and mediocre the next; you can operate on whims alone.  But what's hard is to back a person/project/ideal/organization/value wholeheartedly despite its flaws, despite your flaws.  It's hard to stand up for something.  It's hard to not betray, not once.  It's hard to betray, then ask forgiveness, then continue to believe/support/commit.  It's hard to care.  But it's necessary.

Good rebels don't just shun the system.  They raise up an alternative solution.  Instead of simply rejecting that which they dislike, they take active steps to change the world into a place they do like.  Their lives are struggles, slow day-by-day struggles aimed at something bigger than themselves.  Their lives have value.  Struggle.  Motivation.  Victories.  Defeats.  Caring.  Belief.  Attempts to have real, constructive interractions with the world.  These are the signs of a life that has value.