Question

Hello Rabbi,
In your book Walking Among the Standing, in the chapter on Jewish law and morality, you bring the dispute between Shmuel and Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya regarding the conflict between saving a life and observing the Sabbath.

At first, you frame the dispute around the question of whether life is a means for the commandments, or the commandments are a means for life.
In the end, you write that even according to Rabbi Shimon, it can be explained that he holds that the commandments are a means for life (and that the dispute is about something else).
I do not understand this reasoning. After all, it is obvious that a secular person who lives but does not keep the commandments is not "fine." Beyond that, you yourself write several times that commandments are religious values, meaning ends and not means.
Can you elaborate and reconcile these points? What does it mean that the commandments are a means for life?
Thank you,
Natan