The more that you give and the less that you take in life, the happier you are. Because taking depends upon greed and the inconstant vicissitudes of fortune, whereas the individual can always give of himself, and, if he enjoys the giving, be assured of complete bliss. I know this, and I try to find love in something beyond myself, call it what you will, yet still all I want to do is take ? from everybody.

I've sought to rob myself ? in the blind development of my talents, I've frittered away time and energy that should have been put forward not into perfecting myself, but into perfection of the world. Practicing an instrument so that I could play beautifully, I lost sight of my audience; writing poetry so that I could be immortal, I lost sight of the immortal things that I could perhaps have shared with the world; and striving always to better my peers and professors rather than to learn from them and to teach them ? teaching which is only at its heart and soul perfected learning ? I lost sight of the truth itself. Now, with all light extinguished in the darkness I grope and seek to rob others. I seek from others the gifts that I should be giving to myself ? companionship, energy, charisma, love, compassion, and loyalty. I want to pluck these qualities from them and build a crown of laurels for myself. If I could rob others of their share and due of the world the crowning height of my self-destructive individualism would be complete. I would conquer the world and peer over it, a god of my own creation, horrifying and forsaken.

Well, close enough for a poetic image. But take JD and his friends for instance, and measure them against the flute. I have been spending a lot of time this year practicing the flute and improving my talents in that sphere. I have done so for my own glory, but now that I've found friends, I seek to abandon it so that, instead of playing in an orchestra concert on the 20th, I can go to Canada. What am I thinking? Why, at the prospect of human tenderness, have I abandoned my obligations to a group? Do I truly believe that the orchestra exists for the fulfillment and gratification of my own desires, rather than believing that I myself exist to share my talents with them, to give them what they need of me, to arrive with them at an other-worldly perfection of music that is not my own doing but that some Herculean contribution on my part might help to create?

Herein lies the central reason for my unhappiness: I view every incident, every situation, and every person as simply a means to fulfilling a need, to elevating my own happiness, to improving my own life. But I have neglected to think ever about what I can do to improve the lives of others. I become involved, this way, in obligations, and seeing that the obligations do not provide me with true happiness, I seek to dispense with them the moment that something better comes along. It is because I have never truly given of myself that I so rarely feel pride, that I so rarely feel such love for something that I would prefer it to what ostensibly might seem, on the exterior, better.

How can I become a better person when I don't know the very beginnings of the path? I know what is wrong, I know what is right, but what I don't know is how to bridge the gap between right and wrong and walk from the one to the other. And in the end, to be a good person must intrinsically be tied up with inner happiness...so am I not still thinking on the same sphere of self gratification?

This is the essential theological question ? do we serve God because of what He can do for us or because of what we might do for Him? Of course, it is a ridiculous question, for what can God need from us? But the spirit of the idea remains constant ? we should do good things not for the benefit that they will derive for us, but because they are good. And likewise, it would seem to follow that the person who does good things will be happy because good things are the source of happiness. But the two are completely unrelated nonetheless. Must have something to do with Jesus on the cross... :-P