Per Kate.
in order of importance, how would you rank love, spirituality, freedom and happiness?
First love. Then freedom. Then happiness, and of course, lastly spirituality.
Here's why:
I can't think that much would matter without love in your life. Point blank.
I toyed with making freedom first, because it's another one of those things that without it, it seems like there would be nothing. I'm certain that we take freedom for granted, but I'm also one of those people who thinks you're never truly free, and that what passes for freedom is in fact one of the most confining social pacts we make. Nevertheless, relatively speaking, we live in one of the most free societies on the planet, regardless of the confines of our society.
And happiness. The concept of happiness makes me slightly uneasy. I don't like the adjective happy as a way to describe my state of mind. Am I happy? Sure, almost consistently so. But that belies the greater, deeper joy that is often a part of my life, and the very low, sad times that I've experienced. Happy seems like this strange middle ground that means content, and if that's the case, then yes, I am certainly happy. But I don't think that it's necessarily more important to be happy than loved/loving and free. If you charted the last five years of my life, with a middle line denoting contentness, I'd almost always chart above that line. Sure, it would dip at times. I had a stressful December, for instance. If happy is having your life chart above the line more often than not, then yeah, I'm happy.
But happiness is one of those things I think we decieve ourselves with. I mean, what does it mean when your parents say "I just want you to be happy."? Because you can't seek happiness, and you can't make it. It seems like being happy is a happy accident, pardon the language. You can do these things that you think will make you happy, and they won't, and the littlest shit, stuff you think couldn't make an impact at all will blow you away with joy. Happiness happens upon us, and yes, it's very important to experience happiness, but it seems like you can do everything in the world to catch it and be incredibly unsuccessful. I realize that this is almost completely opposite of what my sister feels, and that's interesting, isn't it? I can't tell you why.
Anyway, I don't have much to say about that last one, spirituality, because I don't have much. Unless you count an elephant in the sky. Which, on the basis of that one statement, makes it seem all the more unimportant, eh?
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