There’s nothing predictable about our journey here, and we’re not well-served living it with anything less than our complete passion and intensity. I believe, at least in the past, a true journey was an adventure defined by the lack of a clear destination, not knowing exactly how you were going to get there, your success not guaranteed, and your potential failure costing your life. In short, embarking on a journey was to embark on an adventure where you had nothing to lose, so you might as well play all out.

This sentiment began to happen again during the Cold War, a world where just a few nuclear bomb detonations could cascade quickly into the end of society as we know it. Faced again with uncompromising options, the confidence to tackle our fears head on, and make a stand for what we believed in became a more tenable option than living a life in bondage by our fear.

Nowadays is not much different than our histories tells us in this way. As most historians will affirm, humanity moves in cycles. We repeat old patterns and mistakes in new, slightly more interesting ways (in the most optimistic sense), while also finding new ways to live and express our wondrous creative potential.

This is really the breakthrough of modern society. Not all our technological advances, not our forays into new, more dangerous ‘final’ frontiers, both physically and philosophically. Our breakthrough is that we’re still living in a universe filled with such beauty and such pain—two vastly different experiences, a paradox not to be resolved.

So move forward with confidence. We’ll live to see another day.

“After all, perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.” -Albert Camus