The best preparation for good work tomorrow
is to do good work today.

Elbert Hubbard

It is always difficult for me to define in what I believe. Actually, I see myself standing in the middle of the crossroad. It will soon be time to decide which way to go, but as of now I still stand with little clue of where to go.
I grew up in the family in which religion was seen as a waste of time, only for those who didn’t have better things to do. There was no God in our home, only the belief that hard work is the purpose of the entire life. I am not sure how my parents dealt with the void of bigger purpose, but I found myself comforted by the mystical nature around me. I believed that nature was a thing controlling our lives. It was not something like paganism, I believed in nature as a single unity of everything. I saw how perfectly balanced it was, and prayed that my life could be similar.
However, years later, when I moved to live in the city, I began to notice that a lot of small, at first glance even insignificant, accidents, which we tend to call coincidences occurred and had a great impact on my life. The sheer number of these accidents suggests that it is not merely a coincidence, rather I think it just an illusion of one and therefore I believe that there must be something or someone guiding us somewhere. I sometimes allow myself to dream that maybe I am just a small peace of some larger picture, just like a screw bolt in some machine; I am not to understand what machine it is or what will its purpose be. But, the fact that maybe I won’t ever find out what my purpose in life is, despite being somewhat depressing doesn’t hinder me in my journey, as still even a mere screw bolt is necessary for the machine to be complete.
So, today I can say that I believe in some Being beyond me, maybe it is the Christian God; maybe it still doesn’t have a name. I am not yet able to see what it is.

I am in love with this world
I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests,
sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts,
the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds,
and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.
John Burroughs

I believe that saying that we live for love engulfs the largest range of things: from love to self to love for a thing and so on. Love is such a big word, but maybe we need big words to describe the purpose of our lives, so as not to feel at least small ourselves. Or maybe, we say big words because we are unable to point a specific thing and feel that it is a right one. One way or the other, love, in my opinion, is a good thing to live for.
First of all when our goal in life is to spread love it makes not only us happy, because we do what we believe in, but it also makes others feel good. No matter how difficult the situation might be a person willing to help, to listen, to understand, to do sometimes even nothing but stand quietly, makes a huge difference. Giving love, or care, you could specify, requires undivided attention on the person in question. In a way it could be said that mostly we love others for the love of ourselves, because we get as big the present back as we were willing to give. It might sound selfish, but it is inevitable.
However, I think that love for a person is not nearly as big as the love for the world. I personally tend to experience the love for the world, especially when I am taking pictures. I like microphotography, because it is amazingly overwhelming to witness such beauty, such natural order and simplicity that my heart seems too small to grasp it. To live while in love with the world is just like to see that beauty everywhere: in good and ugly things alike. To live with the belief that every single thing and living being was created in love and for love is my purpose.
So, love is truly amazing, and it seems that indeed it should be the ultimate thing to live for, it is big enough not to reach it completely but near enough to feel how good it is and chase it as far as possible.

What we life for?

A disturbing tragedy “Death of a Salesman” is in a way an example of one of the purposes for our lives. I think it is a dream that Arthur Miller depicted (at least from the perspective of Willy) as a reason to live - a dream for a better life, for fame, for love. It should be admired to have a dream and live for it, strive for it, but as we see, it doesn’t end with a happily ever after. This dream became the tragedy of his life, though even that I could argue, as I think he actually had his dream come true – he felt the love of his son, he was happy in his world. His life ended, though, because, he had no other dream, as is always the case it is better not to have your dream fulfilled at all than to have it fulfilled early. We loose our purpose with the end of our dreams, and it is rather difficult to find another dream to pursue.
As for myself, I cannot clearly say what for I live. I live because I haven’t been given the word in this matter, I live because it is better than not to, but I cannot say that it is only because of that. In a sense I too live because of a dream about the future, but this dream is only connected with the changes of myself, as I am too aware of the downside of the expectations of other people, of life even.
It was difficult for me to watch this movie, as a pretty similar situation I have at home, just not as tense or as far evolved. I am as Biff to my father, who is a lot like Willy. It was heartbreaking for me to watch the same struggle of Biff to try to make his father understand him, just in their case it was already too late. I took action sooner, and maybe that prevented the tragedy from happening, or maybe it is because simply the times are different and truly children grow up faster and more self-aware, and more independent.

Dear Man,

I am writing to inform you that I am highly dissatisfied by the way you have been treating me for the last century.

Firstly, I find your idea that science can explain me rather preposterous. When I saw you develop the unique skill to ask questions I never imagined that one day you would go as far as claim that for something to be real it has to possible to comprehend it with the five senses I have given to you. How you reached such a bold yet naive conclusion is beyond even me. That’s why I would like you to ask yourself, if you can see your brain through skin, if you can taste it, smell it or maybe even touch it. I doubt the answer would be affirmative. Therefore, I could claim that you have no brains, couldn’t I?

Secondly, your attempts to deny my existence are not only rather insulting but disturbing as well. You say that there is no valid proof for my existence. I would like to ask you, what you hold as a valid proof, because if memory is failing me, only two millennia ago I sent to you my only son, with whom you acted as a wild savages. I gave you proof, but how can I be at fault if you simply devaluated it. Moreover, that is not the only proof you have been given throughout the history. The mere fact that I am you can see every time you lay eyes upon a newborn baby. The trick here is that you don’t want to see me, and therefore you can’t see me. That’s the power of free will, of which, ironically, you are so proud.

Finally, your habit to misinterpret the little things you see me do is astounding. When I give the means to you to become a better man you begin to whine that I am unfair and even cruel. It saddens me immensely that you think I would choose the more painful road if there were other possibilities. I have no intention of making your life miserable, I only wish you to live happily, but for that you must be ready, you must be able to cope with the happiness I offer.

Therefore, I suggest you to reconsider your present position and look into these matters thoroughly – not only on my behalf but also on behalf of yourself. Otherwise think of this letter as a notification of my intention to take more serious means to correct the present situation.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours truly,
God

Things I carry

You do not know me, but that is not a big problem, as often even I wonder if I know myself at all. However, what I do know, and you are about to know, are the things I carry. Just like I check the insides of my bag each time before leaving home, I like to be aware of the overall weight I carry as well.
Some people say that the inside of a woman’s bag is like a mirror of her personality. I do not know if it is the truth, but lets test it: I don’t leave home without my old mobile phone, my white childish watch, green toy-like purse stuffed with discount cards and most importantly I do not leave my home without taking at least one book. (I learned that carrying a book is a good charm against boredom.) So what does it mean? Am I a grown up still clinging to the days of my childhood? Or maybe I am still a child trying to be like a grown up? Who knows?
I do not like to carry many things with me. However, some comes together even without my consent. One of such is my past, my memories; I carry a lot of them. Some of them are bad and are arduous to carry, some are pleasant and weight very little, but all of them are incredibly valuable for me as a person, so carrying them is a matter of me being myself.
But my past is not nearly as heavy as the present moment. The most pointless thing I am made to carry is the expectations of other people. In addition comes fear of not meeting them, which is like carrying a heavy white bear on your shoulders. However, my expectations of myself are even more difficult to tend to, especially when they are set according to characters from my most favorite books. To make it clearer I can say that it is really difficult to be perfect being, without wanting to drown myself in the nearest river.
But nothing in this world happens without reason. Carrying a heavy load of past and present I learned to live between the present and the future. I became an optimist facing towards the future. My optimism outweighs everything else, allowing me to go forward, to seek to be someone. The trick here is just not to falter, not to forget that future is not set in stone, that it most definitely will be better than today.

Memoir

What role does a coincidence play in our lives? Is it just a thing we fear, but cannot escape, or maybe it is a thing we should look forward to? Once I wondered which the right answer was, or even if there was one. After many coincidences and events that followed I decided to stick to the opinion that actually there is no such thing as a coincidence in our lives. Every single thing we come upon, every single person we meet serve as a sign showing where should we go. One of such huge signs happened to be my aunt.
Today she is a well - received English teacher at a gymnasium, but when I met her for the first time she was one odd aunt I could say. I was 4 or 5 years old then, we were lying in the grass, looking at the sky when she asked what do I see, naturally I explained her that one of the clouds was a castle and the other two made a two – headed dragon, I expected to be laughed at (how else an adult could react), but instead with a curious face she asked why these things were in the sky. “ Where else would people dreams be?” I answered, surprised she didn’t know such basic things. She smiled. And so our strange relationship began. I didn’t see her much until the 6th grade, because of her being banned from my home, for reasons nobody cared to explain me. But as I started going to school in Klaipeda, I started visiting her more and more. Partly because I didn’t have much friends at school, but mostly because she somehow understood me, without me saying anything. Slowly from just my aunt she became my teacher.
Because I still lived with my parents, I couldn’t stay at her place more than once a month. And so as not to feel lonely she gave me a book, it was “ The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien. This book and the ones that followed after it represent the first major turning point in my life. I actually began to live with a book; I would read while eating, while going to school, during breaks, during my free time. I was and still am mesmerized by the worlds books offer to us. Moreover, all the questions my young mind presented I had answered by my aunt during our late night talks. We would talk until 3 or 4 in the morning, lights off, lying in our beds and imagining what the life on Mars would be, in great detail. It sounds almost silly now, but it opened my mind to the infinite amount of possibilities. My aunt – my teacher opened the doors through which I was willing to go.
Though at that time I didn’t realize where I was going, what consequences it would bring, I don’t regret it one bit. It was around the time I once again changed schools. By reading, by raising questions about life I became different from my down to earth classmates. I was seen as some kind of a weirdo. So naturally, I began to doubt myself. It was a darkest hours of my life. I would often cry myself to sleep not knowing how to fix myself, how to be normal. It was terrible, but with aunt’s continuous efforts to make me understand that being different is more of a blessing than some kind of curse I began to see myself as I am. She made me analyse myself, study my actions, my responses. She taught me how to know, how to understand myself.
After two years I changed schools again. I was different but it no longer made me feel less worthy, I knew the world was a lot bigger than we can imagine and yet those two last years at school where my aunt was a teacher, somehow were necessary to complete that period of my life. She finished her teachings by encouraging me to look for more than a task or homework required, to seek perfection in whatever I do. With that she as if completed her role as a teacher, and became more, she became my dearest friend, who she is up until now.
I do not want to imagine what my life would be like if I had not had such an aunt, such a teacher and such a wonderful friend. She safeguarded me against the wrong paths, and yet she let me experience the life fully with its pluses and minuses. I only wish that someday I could make that big of a difference in someone’s life.