This blog is the result of a discussion with a friend after she casually mentioned “that you can’t have it all”. That remark resulted in the question: when is life worth living for? I told her that life is not worth living without hope and dreams. She disagreed and said that love is the most important of all. For her acceptance and satisfaction can make life worth living for.
I think, feel and believe that I could live without (romantic) love. Hence, I disagree with her. However, there’s a tiny little problem as the concept of Love includes – at least – four different types: divine (agape), parental (storge), friendship (philia) and romantic love (eros). It’s hard to conceive living without divine love. The Dark Side would welcome such a decision.
Acceptance, including self-acceptance, is essential for eliminating negativity, like dissatisfaction and unhappiness, from your life. In and of itself, acceptance gives a neutral outlook on life and does not translate into satisfaction and happiness. I think, feel and believe that hope and dreams (ie, goals) are required for generating positivity, like happiness and satisfaction.
The biggest regrets of terminally ill people are unfulfilled deeds and dreams:
“It is not death most people are afraid of. It is getting to the end of life, only to realize that you never truly lived. There was a study done, a hospital study on 100 elderly people facing death close to their last breath. They were asked to reflect about their life’s biggest regret. Nearly all of them said they regretted not the things they did but the things they didn’t do.” Prince Ea, an American spoken word artist and filmmaker
In 2012, Bronnie Ware, once a palliative nurse, recorded the most common regrets of the dying and put her findings into her book called “The Top Five Regrets of The Dying (eg, Amazon, BOL, Guardian, HuffPost-2013, website, Wiki). All five regrets start with the words “I wish that I had”. Hence, unfulfilled deeds and dreams.
This discussion easily confuses output (eg, happiness, satisfaction) from input (eg, acceptance, dreams/goals, hope). Only input is accountable and responsible for making life worth living for. Output is a nothing else – or more – than a person’s state of mind or mood.
Love is both input and output as you need to give love in order to get love (eg, Blue Magic song, Medium, MindBodyGreen blog, Robin Thicke quote, Terri Cole blog).
“If you don’t love yourself, you won’t be happy with yourself. If you can’t love yourself, you can’t love anyone else. You can’t give the love you do not have. You can’t make anyone love you without loving yourself first.” A quote by Kemi Sogunle (bio)
Everybody dies, but not everybody lives (2016) by Prince Ea
artist, blog, text, video, Wiki
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise
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