In an age of instant gratification, we tend to shun hardship. Yet, it's the difficult that gives us purpose, that assigns weight to our endeavors. The Japanese understand this through the concept of "Ikigai". It suggests the meaning in life lies at the crossroads of love, skill, need, and compensation. Notice, it does not promise easy roads.
Meaning arises not from comfort, but from the sweat and struggle of reaching beyond our grasp. Challenges are not setbacks, they are the pivot points upon which we turn towards true growth.
What's worthy in life is often what we bleed for. Consider your greatest achievements. They weren't moments of ease, but of hard work. Worth doesn't lie in speed, but in the grit to endure.
The sum of our hardships shapes our memoirs, our legacy. They're our stories, the echoes we leave behind. Remember Mandela, Gandhi, Curie, King? We admire them for their courage to face the storm, for their perseverance.
Our legacy emerges from grappling with what’s hard, when we strive and falter, yet continue. It's in our struggles we discover our true selves, earn our worth, and carve a legacy that resonates.
In short, life's meaning, its worth, our legacy, all root in the soil of difficulty. Embrace it. It's here we build lives of purpose, of value, of enduring echo. It's here, in the difficult, we find our narrative, our worth, our footprint in the sands of time.
These heroes made big differences for many people. We, a million rotarians, also have made big differences as we work together.