I lack effort in many forms. When effort is excreted from my limbs, it is usually for selfish indulgence. Mainly, my question is this: is effort put into forced learning that is found to be useless currently a necessity for a rewarding life?

..what? mm kay, first off, a rewarding life is dependant on ones goals and values in life. Everyone has diffrent values and beliefs and a diffrent way to structure said beliefs, so.. you first have to figure out what it is in life that you are seeking, which will give you a rewarding life.

Second.. Simply decide if putting effort into forced learning will help you to achieve that which will give you a rewarding life.. presto you can answer your own question. Achieving a rewarding life is very simple, it is this. Decide what you want, Decide how you can get what you want, Go get it.

Glad to hear your opinion. I see that the question has its answer more in myself than any where else. Thank you for the nudge.

The answer could depend on if you believe in free will or not. If we don't have free will, then life can be effortless because nothing we do can make any difference--everything will occur as it was destined to anyway. However, if you do think you can make a difference, then you have made the first step in recognizing a deficiency within yourself.

The moral question is this: Is a person responsible for recognizing and correcting his own weaknesses? If we don't have free will, then don't bother. However, I think we are free, so I think the answer to the question is in the affirmative.

How to get more effort (or motivation)? Knowledge is the key. When one knows what right action is, then one is able to take it (if he chooses).

Acceptance of who you are is not predetermined nor out of your ability to recognise. If you have been acceptiing of your limitations and potential based on social dogma of what a good person is and how they act and look then you may find yourself in compromise due to the inner desire not matching the external desires of the socially created standards of your surroundings.

Because we are nurtured by a system that allows competition to exist with the acceptance that we are not always equal, We believe we are either superior or inferior to a baseline that does not exist other than in belief.

In the present job market of the town that I live, a coastal resort town with 90% of the homes being second homes for families of wealth, the living situation for most of the labor force has become difficult to deal with.
Most jobs being minimum wage service jobs do not cover costs of buying or renting homes because these costs are greater than what can be met at minimum wage. Unless you are a business owner there is no industry other than the tourist industry and those with college educations usually seek bigger incomes in bigger cities.
If you listen to people like Paul Harvey on the News who speaks of a job market that exists in the face of increasing unemployment applications he would have you believe that people are lazy and aren't looking.
The circumstances that exist where it is difficult to accept a job that doesn't cover the rent and feed the family or ones self means that the jobs available may be due to the circumstances that are not defined by government systems of measure.
If you can't live in a place where there are lots of jobs that don't support your food and housing, then you may go to a town that has less jobs but jobs that do support an environment with cheaper living expenses. In which case you may be willing or motivated to wait for the job in the environment that supports your abilities.
Unemployment statistics do not really describe the ratio of jobs available to those without college educations or situations like I see where the jobs available exceed the population of a town that is mostly empty in the winter time, leaving the local population to survive the winter without the industries resource which are the tourists. I suppose everyone could move out for the winter and come back in the summer but lets face it that just ain't gonna happen.

You have to ask yourself where do you compromise in your life?

In circumstances that exist where I live, where the jobs don't support the service workers who entertain and take care of the wealthy, leaving the restaurants and shops without a labor force one might move to another location and start anew.
If you've lived in one place all your life and refuse to move then you will be forced to meet the conditions whether you want to or not.
This causes stress and often resentment which does not make for a happy life filled with enthusiasm and potential, for those conditioned to respond to life coming at you rather than being a condition of choices.
If you have grown up in the midst of others who excell in life where you struggled you may find yourself uninterested and uninspired to live amonst those who seemingly ignored you and your needs to fulfill their own.
We are not victims to this only part of a creation that allows separation and the need for greed to outweigh compassion.
Each of us has a dream inside of us and we are not without the choice to pursue it. We are often oblivious to the dream because of social programming that idealises certain types of desires over others, but we are not by out inherent nature unable to pursure the heart and the desires that lead to fulfillment.

If you believe that money and power are the way to fulfillment then you might lose sight of a greater desire to be fulfilled by something much greater, simply because you have not experienced the reality that money does not buy happiness.
Lost in your thought of not having, and with the programs of acceptance in the reality of separation and division, you can succumb to the illusions of reality as dictated by the social beliefs of any system, making you a victim of circumstance and leaving you with a less than inspired view of your future.
But with a greater experience of yourself and the possibilities of what is available to you there is nothing stopping you from becoming or creating what you really want.

It's only when you look on the outside while listening to what others tell you is real, and there is conflict inside with what your heart tells you is real about yourself, that we either choose to accept what we are told and capitulate to illusions or rise above illusions and follow our own bliss as Joseph Campbell would say.

You have to find your own purpose and if no one has told you this or you have not allowed this to be a part of your reality, you may find yourself a bit lethargic in your pursuit of happiness.

There is no school that can teach you the meaning of life and so the subject matter of any educational system is going to be relative to social standards that are based on protecting what the majority wishes to maintain in belief and in attachment.

Politically the United States of America has lost the perpective on which the country was founded. It was founded on a set of self evident truths, Natural laws that support the freedoms of expression and the right to pursue life according to desires that do not infringe upon anothers rights and freedoms.

Interpretation has become the issue in these rights and freedoms and the democratic process of truth interpreted, weighed and dictated by the majority has compromised the Truth by making it subject to what the people think in each moment with the changes in experience of themselves and in their desires in life.

Evolution of the species is a natural process but because we are often denied our inherent ability to choose for ourselves to pursue our lives as we wish because of circumstances that seem out of our control we can make a desparate attempt to grab what we can, and at the cost or expense of others.
It is difficult to do anything in life that does not come into the awareness of others and inevitably the definition of infringement is weighed on the volume of resentment or the feelings coming from someone who doesn't like what they see. We become more and more unable to move without affecting others and how they will think. Creating a system that makes more rules and more divisions in personality and potential to try and protect the loud voices that whine and complain about the world around them.

There is no freedom in perpetuating systems of belief such as these. God is not Democratic but interpretation of God is not set in stone either. Until you become responsible for your own feelings and decide to create without the limitations of belief you will always be subject to changing realities of truth.
The natural laws that support creation support choice.
Becoming wise is part and parcel to the recognition of your potential and how it supports others in their ability to choose.
Diversity is often feared rather than expanded upon because it threatens ones ability to control what others do.
Don't surrender to control created by anothers expectations or limited awareness of themselves.
Your ability to rise above limitation is proportionate to your own ability to recognise the true potential within yourself.
If you believe you have no choice then there is no where to go from here and if you experience here to be less than fulfilling then it sucks to be you.

I am not searching for happiness, for happiness is another blindfold. I have an overabundance of happiness. Have you ever heard the expression too much of a good thing?

I think a lot of what you posted was inferred because of my lack of clarity and focus. Here is clarity by the millions: I am only sixteen. I adore life as it presently is. I am enjoying the many experiences that I am discovering each day. This world is tremendous, and I feel as if I were born (consiousness wise) into it only a week ago. My question was one of clarity. All my "superior" mentors tell me that without effort in the things I do not enjoy, my life will be one of sadness and regret. I disagree, and so I was asking those of this world who have experienced more of the lessons of life if that was truly the case.

I was not at all being concise earlier. My apologies.

it might help if you were more verbose and provided more detail

I think I was clear enough.
If you decide to give your attention to compromise, due to the thoughts and ideals of others then you might as well ignore everything that you experience.
In the attempt to absorb the experience as described by someone else, one often compromises their desires due to the influence of others who themselves compromised their own desires in life.

Why assume that anothers path is your path and that anothers experience has anything to do with your life?

In retrospect some feel like they could have applied themselves to the pursuit of greater ambitions in life so that they might not feel the way they do in that moment they look back on themselves and their lives in the feeling of depression or self judgment. Too often the inability to bring praise and gratitude into their awareness for all the things they lived for in life become overshadowed by the changes in values and the changes in interests that come about with age.
The freedom of expression, experimentation with sex and drugs seems to drift away as life seems to close around them when thoughts congeal themselves into a more dense reality rather than the innocence and possibility of youth.
Those that lose their innocence often try to warn the young that the inevitibility of losing your youth to the dominant social structure means giving up your dreams and the spirit for life that you have now for the discipline and the need to prepare for mental weakness physical disability and the inevitablity of death.

There is a balance and if you are truly wise you will maintain the balance. If you only think you are wise and do not seek to find yourself before it seems too late, then you may indulge yourself in the endeavors of sensory addictions and after burning yourself out be left to pick up what remains without the knowledge and ability to maneuver in harmony with the environment.

I could not grasp what balance you speak of. Conscience and indulgence?

I know for a fact that I am not wise. No 16 year old, in my opinion, can be wise -only influenced by wise sources and

I find your advice very interesting. How can you possibly <I>tell</I> me not to be influenced by others? I can't see how one might avoid influence. The way in which we are raised will account for much of our personal desires. That is all influence. I understand exactly what you mean, though. The influence of others not on the same path as yours. But effort is an innate item that all humans deal with. So, for the most part, is schooling. To be honest, I was seeking justification for my laziness.

perhaps there is some laziness, but perhaps it is also a resistance to the giving up of your innocence to accept the beliefs of the herd.

Almost, I was speaking of conscious awareness, in which indulgence is consciously followed, meaning you are aware of your choices and the resulting manifestation of experience.

I'm suggesting you be conscious of your choices and whether those choices are influenced by others or the true desire of your heart.
This is how you begin to recognise compromise in the choices you make.


Influence may affect belief but there still exists a certain flavor of you and the road you wish to take. Becoming conscious of yourself leads to the recognition of your desires and eventually your greatest desire.

hmm, intresting thoughts Rick, although an entire book could be written just discussing the diffrent aspects of Free Will, the will and its role in reality. I find the concept of the will to be a very deep and profound subject that asks one to question his own actions and whether they are ones own resposibility or given up to fate to decide. Prehaps it may be a bit of both, however another intresting angle to look at is modern neuroscience and its concept of learning and desicion making. As you know modern neuroscience relies on random weights for every neuron which in turn forms a larger network of neurons and weights. Together these form aspects of learning and desicion making, however the question has to be put forward.. is their true randomness? and if not doesnt that mean that the value of a weight is predetermined and thus the end result can also be predetermined, which would mean that fate does infact exist.

Further more the question of consciousness comes into play with this theory, neuroscientists have yet to effectivly duplicate consciousness. This is mainly due to the overwhelmingly large size of the human brain and the number of neurons within it, as well as the massive amount of power required to do such a large operation. Could consciousness be the key to whether or whether not Free Will exists?

I don't think consciousness is required for free will. I can easily imagine an uncouscious robot with sufficient complexity that its behavior, though deterministic and not random, is not predictable.

Many erroneously conceive of the problem as determinism verusus free will. In fact, we can have both. The brain (as are most natural processes such as the weather) is to complex to predict, even if we had perfect knowledge of any starting state. Problems like that are computationally intractable. There is no way to know what a human will do (even in principle) without waiting for him to do it and obeserve his behavior. The existence of these incomputable problems is well established in computer theory by Alan Turing and other computer scientists.

I see. Treating your actions as experiments, as Nietzsche said. I often find myself doing so, acting a certain way that I have never acted just to see the results, and having no way to tell what the effects will be because I've never seen them.

I will continue to seek after my most constant self, and try to take all influence with a grain of salt. Very good "advice," I must say. Ironically, I cannot take your advice with any salt whatsoever, without completely contradicting myself, although I may have already. Nonetheless, thank you.