Stop Going Along With The Crowd

Bernie Siegel shares a parable about a boy in a small village who takes the king’s place as a human sacrifice. The people believed a yearly sacrifice would protect them from evil.

There is an extensive ceremony that follows the selection of the young man. Finally, at the conclusion of the ceremony when the executioner raises his knife to kill the boy, the child laughs. When he laughs the people are stunned and gasp and then all bow down.

As Siegel shares, if you understand why he laughed you understand a major part of the meaning of life.

What the parable teaches is that life is not about avoiding death, and it is not about fear. Life is about making each day matter. (Siegel recommends journaling about the special moments you experience and reviewing your journal on a regular basis; you will remember the difficult ones easy enough.)

I recently listened to an interview Dr. Siegel did with Anthony Robbins. In it he recalls three people who he met that were held up at gunpoint but got free. They all did the same thing, they told their attacker, ‘I love you, this is not who you are.’ One man shared his captor came back ten years later and told him, ‘You changed my life.’ He had never had anyone express care for him before.

So how would you answer the question, ‘What is life about?’

Though there are countless answers people give and not necessarily one single correct answer, realize your answer shapes your entire life and decisions. Among other things, life is about giving that which you want to most receive.

A remarkable university study showed the power of peer pressure and the decisions we make. Eight students were in a room and shown a drawing of three lines, one of which was clearly longer than the other two. They were asked to pick the longest line. Seven students were actors and purposefully gave the wrong answer.

Seventy five percent of the time the eighth person answered with the group and picked the obviously wrong line!

Life is about giving love, making meaningful moments and making progress. One thing that will help or hurt us more than just about anything else is our peer group. It is important to be around people that have your best interest at heart, to be around people that aren’t driven by fear. That is true freedom, and that is how you will laugh at death.