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.