MANALIVE

Is it so great a thing to be alive? After being asked this question my immediate response was: Yes!
Not simply surviving, but living is one of the greatest challenges. Every day we must face this same difficulty and every day we must both accept it and rejoice in it. We have but one life in this world, let us live it. It is the way in which we live, it is the prospect of treating each inconvenience rightly, treating them as an adventure.
"I don't want to survive, I want to live!" The Captain in Wall-E says this remark to Auto when Auto is telling him that they will survive in space. The captain has seen this world's wonders and its beauty and he wants to live, he wants to experience these wonders, to see these beauties first hand. He doesn't want to survive, he wants to live, he wants to be alive. This mere line makes this movie astounding, but the fact that an animated film, meant for children can have such a incredible message, brings up the fact that people do care about other people in this world. It gives credit to there being persons in this world who want to spread joy. And one of the things which will allow people to enjoy living, which will allow people to love being alive, is for people to take each day as it comes, and as Neil Gaiman puts it, to leave no path untaken.
In Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book the same point about living is made. Bod, a boy raised in a graveyard, is told by his guardian Silas "you're alive, Bod. That means you have infinitepotential. You can do anything, dream anything. If you change the world the world will change. Potential. Once your dead, its gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished." As Gaiman so poetically phrased when we are alive in this world then we can do anything. When we are alive we must be alive, not simply walk though this life, but live our life to the fullest. "Every man dies, not every man truly lives. " (William Wallace, Braveheart)
And finally, G.K. Chesterton's MANALIVE, one of the most profound books which I have ever read, deals almost entirely on this subject. But I am by no means capable of giving a justifying summary, nor will I attempt to pick out a quote that exemplifies my point in a book where every line is profound. I will only say to read it, and live your life.
MANALIVE.