We are commanded in the Christian tradition to love, but ponder that. Love or die. Love or God will hate you. Love or you will be thrown into eternal darkness. I honestly cannot decide if Christianity is a net blessing or curse, although it is certainly both.
I think my most excruciating work is done. My struggles continue, but I have lost the need to drink, and this is a major advance.
I watch the news and it breaks my heart sometimes. How can the same poor islands that just endured a hurricane go through another. But people endure. It is what we do.
I continue to choose to believe that universal light is possible on this planet, and that humanity can survive the next 100 years with our freedoms and dignity intact. I can’t of course know this, but as Churchill put it, roughly, there is little damned use in negative thinking. Seeking and finding a condition of paralyzed helplessness is neither hard nor useful.
Many ideas continue to flood through me, but I am for now trying to stay with my primary experience, and my primary existential struggle, which I may describe more fully later.