The Question of the good life

             The good life! Yes, imagine a life fill with adventure. Imagine living as life reveals its newness in the present, each moment having the potential of meeting another human beyond fear, and with a deeper connection to others. Could we begin to live again? It seems like a dream, but it is possible? Living with power, each moment meeting our own lives as it unfolds! Many books offer a better you, I know. The heart of the self-help industrial complex is a promise of three things: being smarter, being healthier, being influential. Once smarter, healthier, or influential, then one will have a better life. But science and most religious text claim that the quality of our lives depends on our relationship. Most of the self-help aims at improving our branding and packaging.There lies a disconnect between the better self and relationship.

            Imagine, a chance encounter, unexpectantly, becomes a place of where love, the fullness of live, reveals itself. Can we live life as we did as children, with each moment full of hope, with each moment full of joy and passion, with mystery and discovery? Could we, despite the many years our calendars have flipped, befriend life again? Yes, live despite our cynicism. Somehow it has to do with love, we think.  It seems worrying about our packaging and branding works against our living a life of love, vulnerability and passion. How can love flourish if we always have an eye on the mirror?

            Yes, it sounds like a dream, to live a life of love. Strangely, it has to do with a four letter word. Remember love experienced before we became jaded by real life, before we developed walls of protection, before becoming adults. Yes, we can imagine, but is it possible beyond wishes or the lose of innocence? Love transcending our narcissism.  Love beyond accepting and to the higher mountain of affirming. Living like a beloved daughter or son at each moment seems like a dream of those unaware. The problem arises with the word love which has been load with trouble; it has been poisoned by being a tool of selling; it has been stretched beyond meaning into the meaningless mush of bland sounding pop music, a catchy tune we hum to our own annoyance. Greeting cards have stained “love” dark making it hard to see the orginal. Could there be another word?

Can love regain its power? There must be another word to draw us back the world we lost while young, when she work    Many times we know what we want ot say and then we lack the words to say it. My wif, when she wasworking on her dissertation, work look up and ask for a phrase or word because she was struck. I would ask her what she wanted to say, and the words would pore out of her. I think of this as I introduce the word I spent time understanding, and once understood, it changed the experience of my like for the better. It's a word that gets at the heart of both my faith and love. The word is the simple prepositon, with. *

 * this the start of sharing of about a book I am working on. I will share my investigations, scientific, theologically, personally and philosophical about the power of a simple four letter word. The word is so used without thought that most of ignore it, and yet as I have grown to understand it; it is at the heart of what it means to be alive and as I said in this post to living the good life.