Ben Jones Gibreel Kamara Eng 111 September 10, 2011 The Three Things Most Important in Life

The three things that are most important in life are love, family, and spirituality. These three things are vital because they form the basic building blocks of the human experience. Of course we need things like food, shelter, and water, but then again, so do all living things. Love, family, and spirituality are all decidedly human things. That is not to say however that animals and plants do not experience a form of these three things, but they experience them in their own way. Love is crucial because it is everything in life. Life is love, love is life. They are inseparable. This is not just a theory or speculation; it is an unchanging fact of reality. In fact, one could go so far as to say that love is the only unchanging fact of reality. Everything else is subjective and dependent on individual thoughts and perception. One might ask, What is love? Put simply, it is the attraction that one person or thing has towards another. We can see this in all aspects of nature, from the largest to the smallest. We see it demonstrated in the attraction a man has for a woman, or a sperm has for an egg, and even on a much larger scale, such as the attraction planets have towards their suns, or the tendency of said suns to be attracted together to form galaxies. Love is the strongest force in the universe, able to unite people through vast

distances. A true bond of love between two people is unbreakable, able to chain them together even from one life to the next. Family is the next most important thing in life. Family is one of the most overt physical manifestations of the aforementioned love. Humans in general have a basic need to not be alone, to feel like they belong, and to feel loved. The most obvious way this is shown is through the phenomena of the family. From the smallest families of just a couple, to the largest with multiple kids, all are built upon the concept of wanting to love, and to be loved in return. Sadly, in our society today a lot of families do not retain the love that they were founded upon. Even the most dysfunctional families, however, did not start broken. It would make no sense for one to choose to live together with someone they knew from the get-go that they could not stand. Being in a stable, healthy family is one of the most important things that can contribute to persons development sense of well-being. However, this is not to say that people who grew up in less than happy families are automatically flawed in any way, or cannot find love in families of their own. The third most important thing in life is spirituality. Spirituality is how humans can experience the higher realities of love and family. This is because everything we experience as humans is simply a reflection of bigger, universal truths and experiences. Most, if not all forms of spirituality deal with the aforementioned ideas of wanting to love, and to feel like we belong, albeit on a much larger scale than that of the love one has for their family. All of us have a desire to feel a connection with some sort of higher power. The exact form that this takes varies widely from person to person. It can take a more fundamental form such as Christianity, Judaism or Islam. It can also take a more spiritual and organic form such as that found in

Hinduism, Buddhism, or even more spirit-based traditions such as Vodou, Shinto, and various pagan and indigenous faiths too numerous to name here. In conclusion, love, family, and spirituality are the three most important things in life because all humans are drawn to them in some form or another. We all have a need and desire to love, to have a sense of belonging, and to be connected to a higher power.