You Could Just Say A Person Is Able

"You could just say a person is able—is alive as long as he gets ideas, and when he doesn't get ideas anymore he's not alive.

"As a matter of fact, when you were veryyoung you had lots of hopes, dreams, aspirations, ambitions and you wanted to go through life and do this and do that. Those were ideas, and you had lots of ideas. Andpeople came along and said, 'You shouldn't get this idea. And you shouldn't get that idea. You shouldn't be so wild about this. You should think more soberly about thiswhole thing and you should dedicate yourself to just one line of attack. What you should become is maybe a good cook or something like that, you know. Hold yourself down toone thing and you won't get these wild notions and so forth.' And so you foolishly bought this philosophy. Wasn't any reason to buy it except that it just seemed like aphilosophy that seemed to be fairly true. You wanted to get ahead in life. And, you know, you didn't feel as alive.

"And when you ran totally out of goals and ideasand ambitions and—all of this covered under the heading of ideas, concepts—when you totally ran out of them, you didn't have any future at all. You actually would dwellmore in the past than you would in the future. Why? There were ideas in the past. You had ideas once upon a time.

"In short, an individual is as alive as he has ideas.He's as aware as he has ideas. Doesn't mean he has to hectically go on getting ideas, ideas, ideas. But it also doesn't mean that every idea has to be put into action.That's the way the MEST universe operates as a big trap. It says, 'Look-a-here, you better not get an idea without putting it into action.' Who said so?"

— L. Ron Hubbard