Today, individuals of society are focused only on the materialistic aspect of the world and how one should live. This, however, is something that affects the upcoming generations more and more as this mentality is pursued by not only the young people but also the older individuals who guide their decisions. This is the topic that is covered by a well explained and illustrated zen work called, “Life’s Pursuit” by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. In his piece, he describes how as we are growing up we enjoy life as it is and bask in the sun or even go out for a swim. Although, just as it was depicted, the girl who represents the rest of the young generation that is fairly new to this world, is told to go and strive a dream of money and luxuries that are along a steep path up the “life” mountain. With time, she is pounded with obligations and more hassle of trying to reach the top with obtaining the best of the best and only seeing the materialistic aspect of life. Finally, she gives up and fulfills her lasting wish of continuing to enjoy her remainder of life and feel joy flood her senses.
In choosing this relative topic, I felt that this issue that Abdul Kalam presents needs to be addressed to everyone out there who is pursuing careers or forming their lives from scratch. Instead of looking to just get a new Jimmy Choo outfit or the latest car release, one simply has to just understand the joy of living while being able to go to work or their career with passion and looking forward to strive more through each passing day. With realizing how life is perceived by myself and others, it is quite astonishing as to how we are blinded only by the material in life that we give a constantly changing value. I have started to realize, not just because the purpose of the script was to make us figure this out, but that we should not just throw life out of the way and look for something that will not stay with us forever. The only thing that will truly be we us is ourselves and self conscience. Even with the cartoonish depictions of life, it describes, better than self explanation, what we see and feel in life as we blindly follow these desires and ambitions that are limitless to greed and material. While reading the work and after completing it, I reevaluated my life decisions and goals as to know if I too were driven by the same ideology that continues to spark fallacies in everyone’s own mindsets. Yet, we must keep in mind we want success but on our own standards. Let us take one step at a time and remind ourselves that there is only one life to live, so lets live it up not through constant stress or anxiety of failing, rather with insurance of our actions and joy with every challenge we come across. Let us start fresh again, mentally and or even physically, with climbing our mountain side and gradually making it to the top of our prosperity and success. What are we waiting for? Let us do this together.
Link to the website of Abdul Kalam’s “Life’s Pursuit” : http://zenpencils.com/comic/kalam/
monsefoukil 
I was expecting a bubbly and silly style to mimic your personality, but I found a voice within this writing that was straightforward and passionate. The content of this post was also surprising to me because you put down materialist things. I feel like in this world we do have a major attach meant to items which we shouldn’t. I agree that we should enjoy life while we have it because we only recognize a moment as it becomes a memory. Life is short, but it is beautiful. If we go around worrying about everything else and what we want, then we will never have enjoyed what we did have at the moment. I’m going to point out some irony since you said we should “live it up not through constant stress or anxiety of failing, rather with insurance of our actions and joy with every challenge we come across.” I note this, because a few days ago you were worrying about grades. I think it is acceptable to stress; after a while you must accept the situation and face it with joy as you said.
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