Arriving Somewhere

Here’s a quote from a fantastic speech I just read:

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born just to be happy, he would not be born to die. But since his body is doomed to die, surely his task on earth must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it.
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, 1978