Without galvanizing our energy and hopes,
Without fixing our purposes and goals,
Life would be a wayward drifting experience.

Goal and purpose create the motivation and the meaning,
The excitement and the color,
Effort is the transmitting fluid of life,
Its organizer and creator.

We stretch our muscles and vibrate our nerves,
To realize a vision, to uphold a principle,
To absorb a sunset, to transmit a laughter.

Effort is the breath of life, the sculptor of its achievements.

The pain of the muscles, the sweat of the brow,
The sleepless nights and the grinding days –
They are the furnace of life,
The deliverers of its essence,
Without them life would be mostly benign biology.