A few weeks ago—after returning from Singapore and California—I made a list of four goals for the rest of my life. It looks like this: 

1. Not work in an office. (Although, there would be plenty of exceptions to this.)

2. Write books.

3. Travel.

4. Work towards the Ideal.

The Ideal is a word I’ve stolen from Alfred Nobel when he set up the Nobel Prize in literature for people producing work in an “ideal direction.” For me, it’s a way of expressing what would have previously been a spiritual thought in a post-religious life. The Ideal is against cynicism. The Ideal is not passive. It is still struck by unspeakable awe at the color green even after the infinite universe is proved to be more infinite than any person could conceive, and even after the processes that brought life about could be written in a textbook, because of the knowledge that life in this universe is rare, and that conscious life is even rarer, and conscious, higher-thinking life rarer still. 

That acknowledgement of life’s rarity is enough to get me out of bed in the morning and enough to keep me from abject selfishness.