Dying to live [argumentative]
...e of its copyright date. An even earlier American novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald, focuses on Jay Gatsby, a man living for a woman, and his struggle to achieve what he desires, It too, is equally relevant to today?s world. Socrates? statement is not only still valid, but it begs application from the modern person. Julia Child stated, ?Life itself is the proper binge.? Life should be for living! Not for constant analysis and contemplation, some may say. However, how can you live life fully without knowing how to live it? As children, many people decide to learn the ever-precarious art of bicycle riding. They get on their bikes, and they fall. They do it again - and again - and again ? but finally they learn to ride. That first ride is always the one that they will remember as being the best. Would that first ride be possible without examination of failure? No. Life IS for living, but it?s not just for pointless frivolity. We are here to make a difference, leave a mark, and without examining failure, we are in no way able to grow and become what we should be. Jay Gatsby lived his life for another person, without ever stopping to think of the consequences, and when he died, no one attended his funeral. He died unloved, unremembered, and without ever leaving the mark that his father had dreamed for him. His life remained empty and pointless, for lack of examination. Brandon Lee, son of the famed Bruce Lee, also a rising star, died suddenly on March 31st of 1993. He died at the peak of youth, and without ever achieving anything spectacular. Some may say, why examine your life when you don?t know how much longer you will have? Lee answered the question himself perfectly three days before his death when he spoke these words: ?Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, and yet everything happens only a certain number of times ... How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps 4 or 5 times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless." Yes, you do not have a sheet of paper that can tell you when your life will be over, you cannot say which day will be your last. However, you need to live each day as if it may, and examine what you need to do to make that day one of purpose and of achievement. Jay Gatsby did not, and he died without ever living, Holden Caulfield?s brother Allie did, and when he died, he was remembered as making the world a better one to live in. We do not know when we are going to die, but we can know how much we will have given to the world when we do. I hope to make it the most. ?Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out,? stated Anton Chekhov, a Russian dramatist. It may seem silly to think that crises can be handled by the members of society with ...