LIFENOTES
about
your life
selected in part from our book
LOVE – In Search of a Reason for Living
Welcome! – We offer you a
collection of notes and short essays about life, about your life.
We are looking for a reason to
live. Where are we going?
Every human being has inside them a knowledge and understanding of love. If you
are willing to take the journey through your heart, mind, and soul, your very
being, you will find in yourself the reason for living. If you care at all
about life and people and yourself, you will take the journey.
We begin our journey.
WHO AM I?
The day you were born you began a learning process that
will continue for the rest of your life. You were, from the beginning, molded
by your surroundings, parents, relatives, playmates, by all the general
attitudes, ideas, and beliefs you came in contact with. As you grew older those
early experiences affected and altered, both consciously and subconsciously,
what you felt and did about all the day to day things that went on around you.
Each new year of life added to your past, changing the way you viewed every new
day, influencing how you reacted to everything from the simplest daily routines
to complex events touching you, your family, and the world you lived in.
As you grew yet older you interacted with people from
different backgrounds with differing ideas about life. You found yourself
actively defending, modifying, or abandoning your early beliefs, adapting the
various ideas you came in contact with to fit your developing perception of
life. Perhaps new ideas were introduced to you by people with dynamic
personalities who espoused one philosophy or another. Faced with the challenge
of those ideas, you may have tenaciously defended your early beliefs,
dismissing unfamiliar concepts with alarming ease by resort to ingenious, if
not solid, arguments. On the other hand, you may have completely abandoned your
past and adopted new beliefs opposite to those you once cherished.
However, like most people, you probably belong to that
vast river of humanity which seems to move along in a fairly discernible
direction, concerned at any given minute with living that moment in the
easiest, most pleasant way possible. If so, you were and are more or less able
to blend ideas, feelings, philosophies, desires, and realities to justify what
you want to do. Along with the majority of people, you were and are good at
sending questions and ideas about the meaning of life and death, as well as
thoughts and feelings about what is good and right, deep into the cloudy
regions of your mind.
Whether we realize it or not, most of us are voluntary
prisoners of our minds, unwilling to question who we are and what we believe,
happy to simply roll along through life. Most of us will live from birth to
death in a world we have fashioned from our past to suit our present. Many will
find comfort through unquestioned acceptance of their family's, or even a
friend's, religious or philosophical heritage. Yet few will ever stand free
from their present beliefs and daily lives to ask what is
life about? Who am I? What should I do? What will I do? If there is
meaning to life, and a reason for living, those questions must be answered.
If there is a true meaning to life, nothing that you do,
say, or think will change that truth. What good is it to live your life
believing what you are doing is right if your beliefs are false and what you
are doing is wrong? It is an understanding of life that we seek, a search for
something in life worth living for.
If you are to find the meaning of life you must be willing
to recognize it if and when you see it. To do so requires you to open your mind
and accept whatever you discover, even if it is totally opposite to your
experiences, beliefs, and wishes. If you are to understand life you cannot hide
in the comfort of daily living, clouding your mind to avoid discomfort. You
must not reject what you discover if it does not fit what your life has been,
is, and what you want it to be.
Since our discussion deals with the
purpose of life, if what we are saying is true, your willingness to
understand is a willingness to grasp the very reason for your living. If the
answers you find are different from those you have molded for yourself, you
must decide whether to continue on the path you are on, or go another way on a
new path toward a new destination.
If you are a skeptic, an agnostic, a humanist, or simply do not know what to believe, please read the complete version of our LifeNotes.
They represent an objective, rational, reasoned, search for a reason for living.
Click here to download a single file version (500k) for offline reading and
printing
Or follow the links below to read our notes online.
If you believe in the existence of God and the possibility of a life after death,
you may first want to read excerpts (about 25-35 pages) that present our basic conclusions.
Click Here to Read Excerpts From LifeNotes
If You Are
Who You Are, Then Who Are You?
Who Will You
Be When You No Longer Are?
A
Law Is A Law Until It Is No Longer A Law
The End May Be Just The Beginning
Why You Do What You
Want To Do
You’re
Not Normal If You Think I’m Not Normal
Lonely Islands In A Sea Of Normalcy
Additional notes
A Fanatic Life Or A Normal Life?
Love
print version of all notes above
[Please Note: Most of the content of this site is taken from our book – LOVE – In Search of a Reason for Living, which was written and edited over some 25 years. In contrast, some of the LifeNotes were written in much less time. Our book represents a more complete discussion of our conclusions about life. After reading LifeNotes, those who want to consider in more detail how we reached our conclusions may want to read our book. If you read the entire book you will find that, while the message is the same, it includes additional materials, including an expanded discussion about living a “fanatic life”.
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