Your passion for life is an inner flame which has to be fanned so that it does not die out, and in order for it to excite and inflame your life. These are the reciprocal relations between you and your passion for life: you keep the flame going and protect it and it protects your enthusiasm.
Joy of life goes hand in hand with caring for the environment, with environmental responsibility and with respect for the environment.
When the inner flame burns within us, we feel joyful waking up every morning to the new opportunities that the new day brings. When it is extinguished we wake up in the morning with no strength, without desire or interest, because the passion for life always goes hand in hand with joy of life. Neither one can exist without the other. That is the reason why our job of protecting our fire is so important.
It is particularly important in this age in which so many people feel lost and don’t understand what they are doing here. It is no wonder you see so many unpassionate lives around you and so little joy, so much tiredness and so little desire to participate in life, so much despondency and so little love for what there is. Always look for the reason which extinguished the fire, because that which has extinguished within us is actually our life force.
Luckily, we can bring life into this flame even if there is nothing left of it but a spark, an ember. But before we understand how to bring life into this inner fire, we should understand what extinguishes it, because in a healthy life it should constantly burn within us all on its own with joy and gaiety.
So what extinguishes our fire? Anger of course, is one of its great extinguishers. And if you think that hysteria and outbursts and shouting are indicative of life force you are totally wrong, because it is just the twisted way of a passionless person to feel alive.
Blaming another person for treating us badly is another way of extinguishing our fire, because it makes us feel like we are living with someone who wants negative things for us, and who wants to live with someone like that?
However, the great extinguisher is pride. It extinguishes all inner fire, because the illusion that we are as wonderful as we are never receives confirmation from the environment, and it leaves the proud ones with chronic frustration which extinguishes all joy of life.
So what brings life into fire? You must already know the answer: caring for the environment, environmental responsibility, willingness to let go of personal comfort for the good of the environment, willingness to always examine our opinion and never invalidate another opinion. Those extinguish the fire and these bring life into it. And the result is that the fire extinguishes the passion for life of those and revives the spirit of these, and so on and so on, in endless reciprocal relations.
It is not difficult to see the tight connection between focusing on the personal needs and lack of love of life, and it is not difficult to see the strong connection between considerate human approaches and joy of live. So don’t forget: any choice you make either strengthens your life force or weakens it. Judging and commenting is one decision, examining and discussing is another, and both options will either add to your life force or detract from it.