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Today's reading was edited and adapted from A Man Worthwhile by John Phillips Meekin, published in 1913.

The all-important question for everyone to ask of themselves,

if they have the slightest spark of intellectual ambition in them is,

How May I Become a True Individual?

Then another question will well up from the soul, namely,

what can I do to make my life worth a living? The answer will be, look to the light,

be true to your inner self, and have the faith of the poet who said,

Better to strive and climb, and never reach the goal,

Then to drift along with time, an aimless, worthless soul.

I better to climb and fall, or so, though the yield be small, than to throw away, day after day,

and never strive at all.

If we cannot make life worth a living beyond simply a material existence.

It seems to me that there is but little purpose in all of life's worry and strife.

Or in other words, if there is nothing to do or hope for but business, to eat, to drink,

and to quarrel with others.

As seemingly the majority of people do now,

it's my estimation that to rest at once in death's embrace would be preferred.

For surely under such conditions, with no progress to be made,

the whole of human life would be but a monstrous blunder.

Every man and woman, living or dead, would have been playing the part of a serious fool.

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