What Is It Like to Live?

Well, may we ask

“What’s it like to live?”

To peel off the mask

And watch God give!

First and last

It’s the matter of joy

To forget about the past

And not let life annoy.

Knowing love

To know love in what we do

Is a blessing from above

That is beautifully true.

To love what we do

Is to do what we love

Through love joy grew

Now you’re free as a dove!

There is something about love that computes with joy. To know love is to know joy. To know joy is to know how to love what you do and do what you love.

To love what we do is a choice. Yes, we are able to transcend even ourselves.

If you don’t believe me, you can take a good look at Viktor Frankl’s life. Imprisoned by the Nazi regime he took the power of oppression away from his oppressors by choosing to be happy. Sure, he was a psychiatrist, which gave him a leg up in the knowledge stakes. But he still needed to transcend his own voices of weakness for wanting better for himself than he could have at that time.

We do not get one more day or one more minute on this earth than we get. We are finite. We live and then die. We are dying even as a process of living. The process is slow, but it is sure. We have this day. We have no other. And we have our choice.

What is it like to live? Only you can answer it for you. Only I can answer it for me. We are guided never better by God if we are humble enough to follow. But there is a coherence between love and joy. If we love what we do – because we can – we can have that sense of joy that overtakes the world.

We must believe that Jesus did in fact come to give us the abundant, overcoming life. Such a life that is resplendent in the living is a gift of grace to take the control we are empowered to take – to take responsibility for our own lives.

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How will we live? It is life’s most pivotal question. Will we choose to live? Will we take life as the gift it is – each and every day – and choose to love what we do and do what we love? Jesus has given us every faculty for such a life. Do you choose?

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.