The simple question to ask as routinely as breathing: am I perpetuating emptiness or striving toward lasting fullness?
It is not even a question of deep down. On the edges of our wakeful consciousness, we know the answer to that question. Usually it isn't pleasant, but that's where human nature tends to pull a fast one, by being purposefully incapable of weighing the enormous benefit of building concentration on well defined goals that can create your own inner and outer legacy, versus the pleasure of the moment.
The trouble today, is that the fleeting moments of pleasure, these distractions and diversions, can be chained together in an almost unceasing succession, thereby building another layer of illusion: by making fleeting pleasure seem permanent as long as it is ceaselessly indulged through the infinite stimuli available to us, online and off.
The best investment of that most precious resource, time, is still purposeful innner development. Which can then guide our external selves to being better human beings of depth. In other words, the kinds who appreciate the value of human life and wish to share it with meaningful, instead of fleeting and superficial, connection. As Abil-Kheir so warmly put it: "The light on your face, you will take with you. All else, your sorrows, your joys and all that you lay claim on, you will leave behind. The light on your face, that you will take."
