"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone- we find it with another."
Thomas Merton- American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk, poet, social activist and student of comparative literature.
When I first read this quote I thought that it was very accurate. Mostly because my whole life I was taught by fairy tales that once you find someone you find true happiness and everything is perfect. Obviously we've all gotten to that age when we realize that things are far more complicated than we thought they were. Maybe it's just me but the first thing that popped into my head when Merton wrote the word "another" was a lover, a partner. But it could really mean anyone. With that I agree. I don't agree that we must find a lover to find happiness or to have meaning in our lives. There are so many people worth loving and the first one that we should learn to love is ourselves. So that is what I believe is the meaning of life. To love and not necessarily to be loved in return, other than by yourself. I truly think that it is absolutely necessary to love oneself. Without doing so then of course you are going to find no meaning in life, you can't even find meaning in yourself. But yes in my opinion, if you love, you laugh, and thus you live. And that is what life is all about. Do that every day and the only thing you'll cry about is being overwhelmed with happiness.
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