Our personal quests, if we seek to partake in them, are all about personal growth gained through experience and learning.
Participating in the quest is as much part of human nature as breathing. While refusing to breathe lends itself to a quick and permanent physical death, something spiritual dies within us when we stop extending ourselves to learn.
Nothing good comes from walking around locked in the same stale thoughts all the time, defending prejudgments that were never true to begin with. Think of what are we missing when we pigeonhole people in ways that ignore their individuality and hidden beauties? What does it make of us when we do that?
The path of death shuts down our mental and emotional plasticity, as if thinking new thoughts might somehow negate who we are. The path of life constantly grows toward the light.
The quest constantly provides us with lessons to learn, problems to solve, challenges to meet, and people to help. Depending on how we respond, we either progress on the path to Knighthood or not.
“Man’s quest for a meaning of existence is essentially a quest for the lasting… The way to the lasting does not lie on the other side of life; it does not begin where time breaks off. The lasting begins not beyond but within time, within the moment, within the concrete… The days of our lives are representatives of eternity rather than fugitives, and we must live as if the fate of all of time would totally depend on a single moment.”
--Abraham Heschel
The goal of the quest, which is the secret to living authentically, is living fully in the moment. That is what the quest ultimately teaches us.
By “fully” I mean with thoughtful awareness shaped by reason and conscience, which means Nature’s Law.
