Love Life, Despite Despair

"I bless you in the name of all that is good and strong and beautiful, Antonio. Always have the strength to live. Love life, and if despair enters your heart, look for me in the evenings when the wind is gentle and the owls sing in the hills. I shall be with you."—  Pg. 261


I really like the line "Love life, and if despair enters your heart, look for me...I shall be with you."  I feel like the world today could really use that promise. There is a lot of despair around us.

People become depressed or feel despair for different reasons, maybe this man lost everything, maybe he feels alone, maybe he doesn't know his purpose in life.  Have you ever felt like this?

Despair does just come to the men in America who lost everything. Many children throughout the world have lost everything before their one year old birthday.
These children make me think of the line above, "Always have the strength to live."

I feel like the world around us sends so many messages that can be extremely discouraging.

With this kind of attitude around us it makes me wonder what people said when the goal was established to do this:

 


But I believe in what John F. Kennedy said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."


I think we need this kind of encouragement, that someone will always be with us, that we are not alone. I think it is extremely important for us to love life regardless of what is going on, because it will give us the will to live. We need a reason to wake up in the morning. In Japan there is a saying, "Ikigai" it means, "the reason to get up in the morning". I feel like waking up with an Ikigai mindset is the kind of mindset that helps a nation rebuild after destruction and despair.

This is a picture of Hiroshima right after it was hit with the atomic bomb. There was nothing left. It was completely destroyed. Below is a picture of the same building in Hiroshima today. It took some love of life and strength to live, but the people of Hiroshima were able to rebuild their home after it was left in despair.