Observations on Love, Life, and Afterlife

Before arriving in Tanzania, I had numerous thoughts regarding the importance of love and beliefs in a person’s life. I have had discussions with different people, many of whom are some of my best friends and may or may not share the same ideas as I do, but nonetheless they have challenged me and stimulated deep thought on important topics. “Important topics”, I should qualify, are those which I feel deeply about and consequently affect (and reflect) the values and proceedings in my own life. In short, they are topics which define the person I am. I have never written about some of these ideas, but now I have the time and at least 2 readers of my blog who may be interested in what I have to say.

Now that I am in a situation where I have had time to think and organize some of my thoughts, I have decided to tackle the task of putting “pen to paper” and conveying some of these ideas in the best way I know: to escape to a place where I am motivated to write and am able to organize these ideas with minimal digression. I should reiterate that these ideas are only those which are important to me and I am not advocating that they are the best nor most appropriate way to lead one’s life. Also, you may or may not agree to some of them, but in any case I hope you will enjoy what I have to say and be stimulated to think a bit.

Let me begin by talking about the importance of love and passion in life. I believe there are several different levels of love and I will try to thoroughly explain what love means to me and why I feel as if it is so important to love. Firstly, there is the love that you have for other human beings, in general. In my case, this is something that I have realized is a struggle, but important nevertheless. It is really easy to be spiteful or to have some degree of hatred toward others, especially after they have wronged you. Perhaps it is even easier to be envious of the possessions or accomplishments of others. Maybe you have predetermined ideas about a person or a race and thus, will not be proactive in taking the opportunity to learn from and understand that person or group of people. I make the argument, however that this is not the best way to conduct one’s life. To live with hatred or envy of others in your heart will blind you from the experience of truly experiencing and learning from those people. Maybe they have come from a background very different from your own, have experienced different things, and identify with a different culture or sub-culture, but why should this preclude interaction with these people? Further, why should this prevent you from understanding and embracing the differences that you share with this person or group of people? Is your culture or lifestyle superior in some way? As I have blogged about before, I believe that happiness is the gold standard in life and different people have different ways of finding happiness. Maybe it is true, however, that if you learn about other people you will also learn some things about yourself, and in the end, find more happiness than you had ever imagined. Of course, this would not be possible if you had proceeded with envy in your heart and hatred in your actions. Maybe it is also possible that the happiness you might experience has come about because you have had a rich life experience while you were interacting with and learning from other people. Life, I believe, is about experiencing the unknown, learning as much as you can, and trying your best to find happiness in all that you do. If you can live life with love in your heart, I think it will be easier to find true happiness.

As I have mentioned, I believe that love exists on multiple levels. Different from the general feeling of love you may have for other human beings, you have love for your close friends and love for the culture with which you identify. I believe it is so important to realize that human beings value their culture and identity. Why not celebrate the fact that we are all capable of living with such passion and thus, embrace any differences we may share? Use these differences as an opportunity to learn and grow within yourself. Maybe you will learn more than you thought you would. Perhaps you will meet new friends that you wouldn’t otherwise have met, and they will affect change in you that will be for the best. Maybe you will learn that it is possible to love other human beings that you wouldn’t have previously realized you could. In any scenario, you may be exposed to views different from your own and this will stimulate personal inflection that will ultimately affect the type of person you become.

Then, of course, there is the love that you have for your work or daily proceedings which may, in part, identify who you are. In my case, I was formerly a competitive distance runner. This was how I identified myself, and if you had taken that away from me, I would not have been left the same person. I loved what I did and I loved the teammates that I did it with. Because I loved what I did, it was remarkable how satisfied I felt once my collegiate running career was over. I wasn’t satisfied that it was over, but satisfied that I could be honest with myself with the effort and passion that I put into what I did. I often wondered while I was still on the team how I would identify myself once it was over. Perhaps this was due to vanity on my part or an insistence that nothing else mattered besides my running, but in the end other things came along and I was accepting of the new things because I was content. Of course, the teammates and friends that I had strongly influenced my outlook and the passion that I put into what I did. When you are surrounded by people who approach their work (or in my case, training) with passion, you can’t help but be motivated to do the same. Passion is contagious. If you proceed with passion, you give yourself the best possible chance to be happy in the end because you know you have been honest with yourself and with your efforts. Ultimately, if you can be honest with yourself and with your efforts because you have proceeded with love and passion, the chances of you being happy in the end will be much greater.

This brings me to another point. Because we aren’t really guaranteed anything beyond what we have right now in this one moment, we can think of love and passion as a finite resource that we are capable of possessing and investing. If we measure success in our life by the amount of love we invest into our friends, romantic relationships, and proceedings, we realize that where we are investing our love, we are investing our life*. To clarify, we are only capable of loving ourselves, others, and our work to the point when we are no longer alive. At this point, the basic molecules which comprise our body are recycled for use by future life on this planet, and the only thing left by us is the love we have given others. Hopefully we have served as an example of the power of love for future generations and our spirit, for lack of a better term, can live on through them. Perhaps this is the best way to think about an afterlife, as a way to live on through others because you have shown them love, given them love, or affected change in them such that they are proceeding with the love that you previously had. As I have also previously mentioned, my best friends that I have in this life have affected such change in me by serving as examples and challenging me when I needed to be challenged. I’m not quite sure what more a person could ask for in their friends and role models, but it would be a pity to fail to acknowledge the change a person has undergone by continuing to proceed without love and passion in their life. Maybe you will affect such change in others and they will be able to carry out their life in a similar way. In any case, maybe they will begin to understand the importance of experiencing life with passion in their proceedings and love in their heart. I could only hope that this will result in a rich life experience and the realization that regardless of culture and nationality, we are all members of the same human race, are all made of the same basic ingredients, and for the most part, all have the same basic desires to love and be loved.

Now as I begin to conclude, allow me to say that I have decided that it is best to approach life and pursuits with love and passion. The happiness that I experience when I have decided to approach my work and relationships with love, as I have previously defined, goes much further than the superficial happiness that material possessions can bring. If you approach your life with love and passion, maybe you can affect others by showing them the true happiness that passion and love can bring them. If you can’t say you ended with the best of all possible outcomes, at least you can say that you have given all of the love you possibly could have to the person or pursuit. Maybe you have learned about other people, yourself, or have affected change in another person. Perhaps once you are gone you will continue to live on in the form of the love and passion you have given them. Realizing that this frame of mind is capable of bringing you happiness is such a humbling thought; primarily because it only requires a decision on your part. This, for me, is a great way to measure happiness in life.

*“In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die. And where you invest your love, you invest your life.”   -Mumford and Sons

Quick recent happenings in Tanzania: I am nearing the end of training and will be sworn in as a PCV in less than 1 week! I am so excited to finally be able to move into my own home and to call myself a “PCV”. I have finished all final exams, have done well, and will be allowed to swear in. Not that it was necessarily difficult, but I still had to meet minimum standards with technical training and language proficiency. I will leave my host family and Morogoro this Saturday and will spend a few days in Dar es Salaam next week. I will then be sworn in on Wednesday the 15^th and will travel to my site on the 16^th. I have so much I want to accomplish at my school and things that I want to do in and around my house! Hopefully I can find the time and energy for it all. I also hope to have more good news to share about my village, school, and site, as time progresses. For now, stay in touch, and to my friends and family: I hope you are all doing well back in the States and I love you all! Take care.

-Travis