Priorities, Love (II)

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I began Priorities, Love I’d set out to write something fairly concrete, but as the piece took shape it became more prosaic. While the ideas are abstract, this is day-to-day stuff. As I move into a new phase of my life it’s become important to look at my life in terms of priorities. As such, they’re as follows - my mission before my self, my self before my friends, and my friends before my lovers.

We’ve seen what happens when people put their priorities in the wrong order. When people put their lovers before their friends, they sacrifice deeper bonds for fleeting emotions.When people put their lovers before their selves, they sacrifice their power and self-respect. When people put their friends before their selves, they find themselves dragged around by the actions of others. When people put their friends and lovers before their mission, they sacrifice their potential and purpose. When people put their selves before their mission, they fall into hedonism, narcissism and nihilism.

You must always be willing to sacrifice that which is lesser for that which is greater. People tend to do this in levels. Most people in time come to value friendship over romance. Many will realize that no person is worth giving up their own self-respect. But people tend to stop at the final level - putting their mission before their selves. By the millions, we choose lives of comfortable mediocrity over risk. We lean against the wall instead of approaching her. We stay in the cubicle rather than start our own business. Our mission is to fulfill our highest potential; it is the core of life, the highest expression of evolution, and daily, in droves, we deny it. We’re unable to sacrifice ourselves even as the risks grow lighter with every year. For a samurai the highest honor was to die in the virtue of Bushidō. For centuries men have sacrificed their lives for something greater, and yet often we find it unthinkable even to sacrifice our comfort.

Through love, we move upwards. We love through sex, friendship, and honesty; through wisdom, respect, and compassion. Extend that love to the world. Give to the world what the world has given you – everything.

-

See also:

Priorities, Love (I)

---

Floating Points – Faruxz || 2011/Faruxz

Priorities, Love (I)

Your lovers will infuse your life with Éros, with Kāma, passionate love. Éros is an ocean; there is no taming it. When you first set out into its depths it will overtake you, toss you on its waves like a toy. As you grow older you will come to know its currents, how to read its skies, how to sail its storms. Through Kāma you will learn of ecstasy and despair, beauty and sadness. It is a descending love. It will drench your memory with peaks and crashes of emotion. But the ocean will never be still. Éros is not steadfast, for it knows neither bond nor loyalty. Your lover will leave you, always, as you will leave your lover, always.

Your brothers and sisters, your friends, your comrades’ love is Mettā, Philia, the love of family. By blood or bond, their love will remain where Éros flees. It will ground your life in the lives of others; through it you will learn of trust, of loyalty and honor. Philia is a chain, and it will hold you up where you would fall as it will hold you still where you would run. It seeks neither to descend nor ascend, but to remain. In time, Éros succumbs to Philia; lovers become friends, friends become family. It is strong, but still conditional: your friends, your family will follow you as you follow them, always but only if.

Love of self must be Areté, not the thin vanity of Narzissismus but a love that seeks always to move forward. Through life we must seek to better ourselves; to nourish and strengthen our bodies through action, to nourish and strengthen our mind through experience. Through Areté we learn of truth, of power, of virtue and of life. Your self will never leave you. It is unconditional so long as you remain. When you reach the end of your days, your self, your love will be your sole possession; Philia beneath you, Éros a distant memory.

Your mission is all of these things; it encompasses them and transcends. It is not love of passion, or friendship, or power, or wisdom. It is Agape, Bhakti, Prema, Ishq; a love born not of self but of selflessness. It is the love of God. It is the love of life. It seeks not to move forward, but rather to move upward. Through it you will learn of death, and of purpose. When your self is gone your mission will remain, for it exists beyond the self, beyond the scope of a single person. It will remain for other selves to further, and when they pass it will remain still. For there is only one mission in life, and we all, ultimately, fulfill it.

In life we sacrifice that which is lesser for that which is greater; that which is fleeting for that which remains. Therefore put your friends before your lovers, your self before your friends, and your mission before your self.

-

See also:

Priorities, Love (II)

---

Bat for Lashes – Daniel || 2009/Two Suns

October

Jesse was very high. He told her so; “I’m very high,” he said. Eva nodded her head. Eva was very high, too. Sometimes the leaves held to the trees until the start of November. Not this year; a dry spell had sent them down weeks early, and they lined the roadsides, oak-brown, spinning behind the car as Jesse drove past.  It was windy, and dry leaves skittered across the road with every gust.

Like At First Sight

She liked him, almost instantly, though she didn’t exactly know why.

Perhaps it was the way he held his glass; not tight against his chest like the other boys, but at his waist, like movie star from the 50′s. Maybe it was the way he smelled, a little like the smooth bite of aftershave. She liked the way he talked, holding back like he always could have said more, his eyes smiling at her at the end of every sentence. Maybe it was the way he came across as being much older than he was.

He didn’t ask for her number, but she hadn’t expected him to.

She liked him.

---

Gregory and the Hawk – I’m Your Puppet || 2007/Gregory and the Hawk

Goodbye

The thing that hit me when I graduated wasn’t the fact that I would never have to go back to high school, or that I would be saying goodbye to all of my closest friends. That was it; it wasn’t goodbye at all. Friends would  go off to college, but they’d message the next day, call a couple days later, come home to visit on the weekends. It didn’t feel any different from summer, or even the school year for that matter. A part of me was glad I wouldn’t miss my friends, another part of me wished there was a such thing as that final goodbye I’d been picturing since the start of summer. Sometimes we want a clean break.

---

Dr. John – So Long || 1995/Afterglow