Let's contemplate a cell in your body. It spends its life working to sustain some system in your body. Why? Does it imagine it will be rewarded by a cell-god in some cell-afterlife? Obviously not! That's just silly. It does its job because it is part of the body. When all the cells do that, they sustain a life that is greater and more important than themselves. Sometimes a cell stops caring about its role in the body and starts doing what it wants to do instead. These cells often reproduce out of control and cause serious problems for the body. We call them "cancer". But even the good cells will eventually die. That's okay. They will be replaced, and the body will continue to operate as it did before.

We are a lot like cells in the life of society. Each of us has a role to play in some system that helps to give society life. If we are too worried about our individual identity and our personal lives, we may become very sad. It may seem like there is no purpose. We may even do harm to society by obsessing about our individual wants. But if we find a way to live in balanced harmony with others, we will find that we are part of something much bigger and more important than ourselves. It is not our individual lives that make our existence worthwhile. It is when we apply ourselves to sustain some cause that is bigger than ourselves that we find genuine contentment. After we die, we will be replaced. But that's okay, because we did not live only for ourselves, so our death is not the end of the causes we really cared about. Death is just the time when those causes have to carry on without our assistance.