Love

To live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. Samuel Butler

How can our reason be against living? Simply put it is because we are afraid of taking risks. We are afraid of hurting or disappointing or angering some other person or group of people with our behavior. We are afraid of not fitting in. We are afraid that we will fail in whatever we attempt and other people will laugh at us. But we want to live. Our comfort zone may feel safe but we know it is a prison nonetheless. Our healthy instinct is to live and we spend our days feeling frustrated that we never got to do what we really wanted to.

How can our reason be against loving? Once again it is because we are afraid of taking risks. Once again, we are afraid that we will fail; and that we will feel terrible, and that other people will laugh at our attempts. Our problem is that we define failure as the other person not loving us as much as we love them, and this really sets us up for failure. For us, it becomes not the loving of others that is joyful but the fact that they love us back.

But again our healthy instinct is to love others. We know deep down that this is the only thing that can make us really happy. And the truth of it is the reason that "to live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it" is simply because to love is to live. They are not seperate. We live for the purpose of loving. Not just one soulmate, but our families, other people, and our planet. All of life. It is in fact our feelings of love that makes us feel like we are alive.