What do you hold on to when things get tough? Do you get by with tears just to let the frustration out and done with? Or do you stay til the last minute even when things seem tougher towards the end? Isn't it so tempting to say that you hold on to keeping your guts intact; to say that you're holding on to strength; to truth; to life? But what is strength, truth, life?

What do you hold on to when things blur your vision; when things suddenly conspire to somehow slow you down? What do you do when you've a million emotions inside you stirred up by one person and you don't know how to get by? Do you hold on to faith; trust; acceptance? But what are they? Courage? Fidelity? Keeping yourself afloat? What are they?

Or do you hold on to love? Don't they say that love conquers all? That love forgives? That it is not pompous nor boastful. Love is. And Love will, right?

What do you hold on to? I was walking down the street from the gym after almost two hours of working my butt off, and I was thinking if it was ever possible to be happy and sad at the same time. Yet I'm thinking, how can I even be happy when I don't know what happiness is? I don't even THINK I've reached happiness yet. Let's say... light-hearted. Is it possible for a person to feel both at the same time?

Love. Love is willing the good of the other, as proposed by Aristotle in what he calls true friendship, and Plato in what he calls agape. The good is a course of action that meets the need of the other. And how will we know that we're loving? If in the course of the actions that we do, we help the other person reach his potential to operate according to his nature. I'm just baffled by this thought despite that it is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. I'm troubled in the sense that I'm becoming more conscious of how I treat the people I say I love. And at times, I feel like I'm trying too hard to make things work, but I don't want that. I just want love to be. But how can you want love to be if you're not acting consciously? It's sad having this passion to share such beautiful things to the people who would benefit from it the most if they took it seriously. And it's sad because they listen with one ear, and that always isn't enough. How I wish people would see the world differently; more optimistically;with more enlightenment, courage, understanding and yearning for knowledge, truth and reality. I've always been stubborn and impatient to the ends of the simplest things, that when things get complicated, I just throw my hands up in the air and give up. Why had I not tried to smile and work my way around it? And see the good more than the bad? And see the light more than the darkness? Why have I allowed myself to be gulped by the painfulness of the world when I could've learned from it and kept a positive attitude. Why? Maybe because I lost my faith in love. And now that I'm trying to get it back, I wouldn't need anything else to keep my head up in the clouds and my feet on the ground once I have a full grasp of it.

Then again, how can you grasp something you do not know? Or how do you find something you know nothing about? And WHY go on a search for something you don't even have an idea of? Do things fall into place by some magical order that only the gods know? What paths should people take? Which paths are right? Which paths bring about love and courage - the ability to stand your ground in the face of your fears? ... I think life would be simpler if everyone followed some universal underlying principle behind their actions. It's very Kantian, but, who knows? Maybe the world would be a better place. Maybe.. people would want to love? And if they do, maybe they'd hold on longer even for the most minuscule fragment of time. And maybe that'd make a difference somehow...

It's strange and I know that I've been indulging too much in a Socratic dialogue but, what do YOU hold on to? I just want to know. (I seriously do, plus, my tagboard's gone to the dumps. Again.)