TO JOSEPH: THE CONTEXT, ORDER, AND MEANING OF YOUR LIFE

I know you seek to understand what is happening in your life now at age eight. I know you seek to comprehend the very dynamics of life itself, wondering why it is as it is and even why and how you can come to such false conclusions. You have already begun the “quest” of your whole life: to find context of being, order, and meaning. You will seek it everywhere: through relationship and love of others, through nature and the physical pleasures of the body and mind themselves, through detail and focus of mind in minute work, through spiritual paths and the many ways to God and many divinities, and spiritual paths and others ways that avoid God altogether, through the responsibilities of caring for others and your family, for taking care of those who need you and upon whom you may focus your attention rather than only yourself. Such choices will lead you into great anger and despair but also great joy and fulfillment. You will experience profound pain on many levels of being as well as the pleasures of life. You will suffer for others and for yourself. Your remembered mistakes and oblivious hurting of others will cause you heartache and regret throughout your life. In the end you may become a decent human being who loves and cares about others and knows yourself to a much greater degree. You may attain an understanding of who you are and what life is, where you meet and what is required. You will find that there are as many vantage points as there are contexts and that all orderings must give way to chaos so that you may pick up the pieces and reconstruct order in a manner than now fits who you are, for old ways die hard. Yet context and order must be sought, found, created, destroyed, remembered, and recreated. In this process meaning is found and purpose exists. To be human is to climb the highest mountain and gaze upon all existence and to descend into the deepest, darkest abyss and experience the inherent agony of humanity, especially your own. Though life be Heaven, it is also Hell. One must learn to seek the Heaven within themselves and how to maintain it without themselves leading them astray so that they forget who and where and what and why they are. If we cannot find the Heaven, we are destined to Hell until the next opportunity, the next quest, the next lifetime, the next form, presents itself, which all, as is taught by some, is our own choice.