If we see ourselves first as public citizens with souls, then a whole range of common values, ideals and goals becomes visible and we start to see how big we can be. When we engage with the community, history, principles and values (the horizontal axis) and with our own souls (the vertical axis), love becomes a public good as well as a private one. Meaning and commitment become about more than family and romance. Rather than narrowing, the path of love widens.
Meaning, purpose, connection, dignity, are vitally important. Our relationships to the larger world and public life in particular are too-often unexplored parts of the map of our life.
When we take time to fill in the gaps – the blank spots on the map – we realize how much of our lives already take place there. We end up with a larger and richer sense of who we are in relation to a larger whole.
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