Is there any worse frustration than unnecessary frustration? It's terrible how much effort is needlessly spent seeking self-promotion in place of real production that might actually satisfy. It's inevitably true that which nourishes gets noticed. Good ideas effortlessly “sell themselves” without any sort of paid advertising. (Make of that what you will about paid advertising!) It's been said even though what we do is insignificant, it's important that we do it. Yet so long as we're in for a penny, why not enjoy it for a pound? Humanity at its best gets the job done and has a great time doing it.

Altruism lies at the core of our species. Like it or not it's hardwired into our success. Over countless generations our social instincts and genetic heritage have honed a combination now capable of interplanetary replication. This trove has been passed to us not only by countless forgotten human lives but many times more no less forgotten non-human lives. We owe those creatures every bodily comfort enjoyed (and of course those we miss also). Yet rarely is that comfort teased about tomorrow's unimaginable comforts yet to be enjoyed by those building on today's work. It's important to keep this attitude in focus. Removing yourself from your own creations serves the greater glory, leaving apathy and bored behind as waste.

Consider the lowly supernova. It spends an entire life crunching the same old bits, crunching, crunching, only to explode in a cosmic shower of promise it will never know. Every atom created goes on to serve an entirely unknown purpose. Every known thing finds its genesis from the remnants of giants unknown. Truly our nature is forgetfulness, down to the core.

Consider your high life after you spend a life crunching. What new life will come to feed on your remains? Our societies rise like toy villages before a cardboard sky and so fall. What knowledge, mundane to ethereal, do we wield on a daily basis that wasn't passed not even to us but in fact to generations several before?

Challenge every chance life provides, though any pride you take only goes as far as you do. It's just not one of those things we get to take with us. Conceive it, build it, leave it to others. It's not only that what we make of death is at least as important as what we make of life. What we contribute by what we leave behind makes our contribution a little more significant. So make it go to eleven!