Why not start with a song?  An incisive, no-nonsense attempt to grasp what matters…

Patience

by Guns N, Roses

1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4

Shed a tear ’cause I’m missin’ you
I’m still alright to smile
Girl, I think about you every day now
Was a time when I wasn’t sure
But you set my mind at ease
There is no doubt
You’re in my heart now

Said, woman, take it slow
It’ll work itself out fine
All we need is just a little patience
Said, sugar, make it slow
And we come together fine
All we need is just a little patience
(Patience)

I sit here on the stairs
‘Cause I’d rather be alone
If I can’t have you right now
I’ll wait, dear
Sometimes I get so tense
But I can’t speed up the time
But you know, love
There’s one more thing to consider

Said, woman, take it slow
And things will be just fine
You and I’ll just use a little patience
Said, sugar, take the time
‘Cause the lights are shining bright
You and I’ve got what it takes
To make it, we won’t fake it,
I’ll never break it
‘Cause I can’t take it

Little patience
Need a little patience
Just a little patience
Some more patience
Need some patience
Could use some patience
Gotta have some patience
All it takes is patience
Just a little patience
Is all you need

I been walkin’ the streets at night
Just tryin’ to get it right
Hard to see with so many around
You know I don’t like
Being stuck in the crowd
And the streets don’t change
But maybe the name
I ain’t got time for the game
‘Cause I need you
Yeah, yeah, but I need you
Oh, I need you
Whoa, I need you
All this time

After listening I wipe the tears away.  Clearly we are here to love and to be loved.  That is not hard to understand, for persons with eyes wide open.  Human beings, and by extension humankind, thrives given that we are social beings, in a reciprocal relationship of love.  In love and through love, I am and we are.  Descartes got the basic form of the equation right, but Descartes was in error about the “thinking” term of his proposition.  I think, I love/am loved, ergo, I am and we are.  Reason is but a secondary, derivative of love.

We “know” this in the abstract, and yet discover the manifest difficulty of love as a standard practice.  Many aspects of ourselves obstruct, and there’s the need to understand the other Subject of the equation.  It is essential to remember I am engaged in a movement, in a rhythm with another Subject, not an object.  There is no “object” of my affection.  Together, it’s necessary to learn what obstructs, to find a passage through and around the monsters…

Much of the time I haven’t a clue about what terrifies, or what enrages me beneath the surface of my awareness.  Patience, need a little patience…

Hard to see with so many around
You know I don’t like
Being stuck in the crowd
And the streets don’t change
But maybe the name
I ain’t got time for the game
‘Cause I need you…

Never have words more elegantly been written about our condition here on this planet.

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A few lines from Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot:

V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.

Every phrase, every sentence, any action is a step to the block, to the fire, etc.  Indeed.

Finally this from the New York Times:

Mary Wilson, a founding member of the Supremes, the trailblazing group from the 1960s that spun up 12 No. 1 singles on the musical charts and was key to Motown’s legendary sound, died on Monday at her home in Henderson, Nev. She was 76.