Something to live for
Updated: Mar 31
Billy Strayhorn wrote the song "Something to live for". It was based on a poem he wrote in his teens. In the late 1930s it was very hard to openly be gay. Like many songs, it talks about meeting one's love to achieve happiness.
Like the other attachments this website shuns, people can be another. An individual *requiring* a partner, who finds one with an emotionally self-sufficient nature, may have an unhealthy situation, possibly leading to control. Two such more in need people, may form a co-dependency. Two self-contained people are more likely to get to grow together, with a more grown-up or adult balance; whatever that is or may become.
Some people live for God. The truth is, there is nothing to live for that isn't already there, but we keep looking for it. The adage that we come into the world with nothing, and leave it with nothing, is so true. That's quite helpful, but the catch, is that everything in the world, including our families, friends, neighbours, jobs, hobbies, possessions, skills, statuses, and dreams, are overwhelming, with any one of them able to seriously disappoint us.
Religious thought propounds God's existence and "his" consequent pursuit. Saint John said, "God is love". Carol King sang, "Only love is real. Everything else is illusion", and countless others between those two have been saying the same. Jesus once shocked, by telling a group of people, "Before Abraham, I am". "I am" has always been there, it's Buddha's totally detached state. There's the world, and alternatively, there's "I am". Love, truth, Christlikeness, God, "I am", all of these, and similarly expressed equivalents, point us to inner living, to our insides. Jordan Peterson wrote, "get your house in order". And that's all you can do; then hope for the best; and maybe even face nothing but endless pain. Why did Saint Paul say, "Now faith, hope, and love remain -- these three things -- and the greatest of these is love."? (CEB)
Truth, genuine realisation; love if you like, can make the rest pointless, or at best external. That's more or less what Hell is. It's being lost; drifting, endlessly looking for a happiness, that is already under your own nose, and has always been there from the start. I promise you; Hell is on Earth and Heaven is within. And after our lives end, I guarantee that energy remains, if only because science dictates that. Energy and matter are perfectly pure, but before the Big Bang, there was only "I am", or love: God.
Leaving Hell (on Earth) calms your mind, and unlike the "getting warmer" type search game, we played in our youths, let's play "getting colder" now. That's about the only map out there!
Godspeed.