What is our goal as humans on this earth, living this life, now?  I think ultimately all we want is to love and be loved…sure we want ‘stuff’ and ‘joy’ and the basics like food, shelter, and clothing, but when those actual “needs’ are met, what else is there…companionship, friendship, and love.  That’s really all there is.

Sure, we all have behaved badly at times to those we love, but to be good and deserving of love we have to love back.  We have to act towards others as we want others to act towards us.  I have tried, truly, for all of my adult life to be a loving person.  To be kind.  To follow that golden rule of doing unto others as I would have them do unto me…it seems rather simple, but so many people just don’t get it, ever.

Only a few times in my life have I been treated without kindness from one to whom I was good, or at least I thought I was good.  I try to err on the side of forgiveness if you know what I mean…I try to live with the belief that most of us are inherently good, that most of us are genuinely nice, that most of us are basically honest and truly compassionate…but, there is always a but, there are circumstances some of us find ourselves in when we don’t get what we give.  Mountains get made out of mole-hills and an inch turns into a mile and little tiffs get blown way out of proportion.

I have been told over the years by men in my past that happiness comes from within not without…and one of my father’s OTHER creeds, of his three rules of life, is Happiness Wants What It Has…but I have often found my disposition too influenced by outside stimuli and not holding true to me, my insides, my thoughts, my beliefs, my framework for living…But here we are- summer is over- it is October today, and we are in a new season…it makes me think of that song from RENT, Seasons of Love:  How do you measure, measure a year?  In daylights, in sunsets  In midnights, in cups of coffee  In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife  In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes How do you measure, a year in the life?  I feel ‘happier’ and more content this first day of October, than I have felt perhaps in any first day of October in my life.  Is it because I finally Got Love?  I finally GET what it is supposed to be about?  I finally have my within in line with my without?  I have no answer to my questions…but I got love and I suppose that has made all the difference.