Just to be is a blessing.
Just to live is holy.
And yet being alive
is no answer to the problems of living.
To be or not to be is not the question.
The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
The tendency to forget this vital question
is the tragic disease of contemporary man,
a disease that may prove fatal,
that may end in disaster.
To pray is to recollect passionately
the perpetual urgency of this vital question.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, No Religion is an Island
