Go to Joseph.
One of the hardest things for me in life right now is learning how not to be alone. I've been so lonely and isolated for such a long time that I managed to forget much of what it requires to live in common.Lessons that you learn when your very little are still relevant when you're older. Lessons like how to love someone with your entire heart and soul without becoming possessive of them. How not to be jealous. How to not behave maliciously even when you are feeling jealous.
Loneliness is a terrible thing, but it is not without its benefits. A solitary person, left to himself, is burdened only by his own problems. Even one person's burdens are sometimes intolerable, but how can we survive, crushed under the weight of the burdens of mankind?
I figured out a while ago that life is not worth living if it is lived entirely alone. Material things - the riches of this world - will not sustain you without love. Even the meanest souls I've ever met have craved affection sometimes.
The problem comes in deciding how, then, to live. If love is the goal, how and who do we love? Every soul on Earth is lovable in some ways; and in a certain way, we must begin to love all men before we can find peace and joy. But there are relatively few people who share so much in common with us that we can really find mutual understanding. All men share some traits in common, but very few will share nearly everything in common.
Very few people will share enough with us to really justify the English use of the word "love." After all, to fall mindlessly, passionately in love with just anyone and everyone is a form of self-abuse. For love to be truly satisfying - for it to be truly edifying - it must be perfectly reciprocated. Joy is certainly not the trepid surrendering of ones soul to ones beloved only to have it ignored, discarded or outright mangled.
We mortals are far from perfect. It may be that, within the bonds of our human understanding, we may never be fully satisfied with a mortal love on Earth. Nevertheless, there remain some few, rare individuals whose souls so mirror our own that some real resonance can occur. It is in our relationships with these few, select people that our lives first begin to manifest their true meaning.
posted by Sarie @
9:42 PM
>Comments: 0
