I was driving down South Super Highway when I had this moment. A Eureka moment. The same kind of moment you get on quiet Sunday afternoons when you look up in the air and suddenly just get it. Get what? Get IT! Those split seconds when you get a whiff of living air and just realize that life is beautiful, that there are no problems, that moment where you just breathe in and say to yourself "I'm content, nothing more, Lord..."That moment that in turn just simply goes away and fades into oblivion when you so much as flinch.
There it was playing inside my brain, the words love... feel... A picture of Morrie comes into my mind's view... he's crying, he's yelling out his famous line... "Love, we have to love, we just have to love..."
They say the opposite of love is indifference, not hate? How much plainer can the meaning of life take its form... "Love, feel, experience..." Why do we feel suffering? Isn't it that suffering is merely a mechanism... a catapult that lifts us from ground level to heights upon which we see the world in a different level? From up above... or should we say from down below? Isn't it true that when you look through the window of an airplane, that what you see makes you look at the ground differently? with more than one perspective? Isn't it most important to realize that we experience the negatives because of the positives?
Since I was young, my father kept telling me "Don't despair when you are in your slumps, that only means that the ups are coming soon." Could he have been more correct? The people who we should pity aren't those people who don't suffer... The people we should pity aren't those who haven't experienced heartbreaks, who haven't had hunger pangs, who haven't had insecurities.. The opposite of love is indifference. The people that we should pity are those who have gotten so used to life, that every cheeseburger tastes the same... that every day at work seems like push-ups that you merely have to get over with... The people we should pity are those who do not feel...Who have lost all sense of passion, who just think that their goals in life are their only goals in life...
When we talk about life's meaning, we usually talk about what we make of ourselves. When we look at what we have become, it doesn't always carry with it the memories of all the hardships, the smiles, the blood, sweat and tears, all that we have experienced along the way. Yes, whether we become successful, whether we become virtuous, whether we become what we want to become is immensely important, but aren't what we went through values in themselves? And because we always remember what we have gone through when we think about what we are, isn't it possible that what we went through is just as important, or maybe even more important than what we have become? When you court a girl for months before you get together, isn't a big part of your relationship related to the courtship? If it isn't, then let's go further, isn't a great part of what you are right now as a couple defined by what you have been through? The answer is yes...
What is my point? That what we do today and everyday for the rest of our lives. The little things, the daily routines, the things out of the ordinary, the dinner dates, the Saturday night alcoholfest, the way we treat our parents, the way we treat strangers, the way we treat the poor, those things are just as important as whether or not we become successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers... What we do and what we feel everyday is so valuable... In the end, it probably won't matter if we were the greatest lawyers or presidents of our companies... what would matter is how we have helped other people realize that they could feel loved, that they could feel empowered, that they could feel human, that they could feel like themselves... In the end what matters is if we have convinced ourselves that our lives were worth something... In the end what matters is the self and others... That is probably the reason why in the history of mankind, only a few things were considered as basic... the human, the other, and their environment...
What I probably mean is... let's ask ourselves if other people have felt better because of us, that they felt human... let's ask ourselves if we look at ourselves and we feel satisfied and at the same time, ever hungry to do more, for ourselves and for other people... You could possibly say that life could be compared to a drug... you have only a limited time to enjoy it's effects... and you can do anything from trying to lengthen the hit, to trying to enjoy it yourself, or trying to enjoy it with others... in the end you can't take any of it back...
Live... please...
