In the times we live in, it often happens to wonder what is
the point of carrying on living, if still exist something to live for, something
that can be the reason of one's own existence. Often we answer these questions
by clinging on to the things that have more meaning in life: family, love,
friends, career and helping others. But the events of this historical time show
that none of those elements can be the ultimate reason of one's life, the
'quid' that can give meaning to the rest: when all the things that have
been giving meaning to our lives come face to face with death, they lose their
capacity of offering meaning. What can ever be the point of loving, of
being good to others, of career when sooner or later everything ends?
This doesn't have to leave us dismayed because the reality
that we experience and observe shows us also something more. In goodness,
in beauty, in truth, in love we can notice the existence and the promise of
eternity. A sensitive soul feels eternity inside itself every time it
has the possibility of contemplating the beauty of nature or of helping another
human being. And to every person that truly loves someone else is given to feel
that it belongs to the essence of that particular love to last eternally.
Therefore if it is true that reality shows us a limit, it also gives us a
glimpse of the infinity. This means that only eternity and the human struggle
to reach it can really give meaning to the human life.
It
is right at this point of our reflection to wonder how can one reach
this eternity. Here comes back that same love that on its own was
unable to give meaning to the life of the individual. Every real
phenomenologist (and every good observer) will see infact that the
human being seems naturally born to love and to be loved: a
well-fed man that has got everything necessary to him but who has
nobody to love him will look like a walking dead. So it is by
loving that a human being fulfill his own essence, that a man becomes Man. It follows that love has a primary importance for the human
being in comparison to the other elements (the good, beauty an
truth).
This
is not sufficient to make of love the mean to reach eternity: it
must have as its essential characteristic the capacity to save. The
good has got salvific value which is however connected to an external
entity who awards the good man with salvation; this would bring up
one more dilemma: the demonstration of the real existence of this
external entity. Beauty has got only the capacity to elevate us to a
pure contemplation of eternity, it leaves nothing to man but this
vision. Tha same can be said about the truth which gives to the
intellect the light of a certain knowledge but which doesn't save the
human being (even if it is very helpful). Love instead has got
salvific value in itself: when a person loves another one, he makes
the experience of coming back to life, of paradoxically being saved
from his own life. And this is true for every kind of love
(spousal, of friends, parental etc...), but in different degrees
where the spousal love holds the greater degree.
For
those reasons, ultimately, love in all its kinds constitutes the one
and only reason for living because it is tightly tied up to eternity
and to the essence of the human being, becoming a bridge between the
two.
