Variations on Life
A Word That Circulates #3 — Love, shine, give, struggle, hope: five calls from a reader of the French Dialogues, woven in 1980 into a meditation-poem on Life as a path of light.
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The Waymakers · A word that circulates · 6 min
When your voices and your exchanges become articles and enrich the Dialogues.
This column, A word that circulates, is yours — the space where your texts, which resonate with the spirit of these Dialogues of the New World, find their natural place. They are the testimonies of your lives as Waymakers who, through their everyday acts and wholehearted commitment, love this world enough to hope to see it change for the better and to wish to contribute to that change in their own measure. They illuminate the path we seek together to trace, and the hope we wish to carry into the very heart of the night.
Today I am delighted to share with you the text of a reader of the French-language Dialogues — a text that is admittedly not recent, yet one she has carried and embodied throughout her entire existence.
Moreover, I recently had the good fortune to meet her, and her whole presence, simple and candid, bears witness beyond any shadow of a doubt to the light she carries day after day.
I thank her sincerely for having entrusted me with this text, which has meant so much in her journey. I have shortened it slightly, with her permission, and reset its layout so that it retains its full force in this format. It is preceded by a brief introduction she kindly agreed to write for us, sharing the circumstances of its composition.
Jérôme Nathanaël
I was twenty-eight years old, in the midst of separating from my partner and the father of my child.
I had just changed workplace, and the young people I dealt with in my new library were difficult to manage. My little girl, quite unsettled by the family situation, had become violent and prone to anger.
I had lost my bearings and no longer knew quite what meaning to give my life. A friend advised me to ask my inner guide for answers to my questions.
Which I did, sheet of paper and pencil in hand. I wrote a first question, and the answer came to me through automatic writing. And so, for approximately three months, a curious correspondence took place each evening between myself and a guide I called my guide of light.
A poem arose from all this. Here are its most significant excerpts.
Christine F.
LOVE, AND LIFE WILL BRING YOU HAPPINESS
SHINE, AND LIFE WILL BRING YOU JOY
GIVE, AND LIFE WILL BRING YOU PEACE AND HARMONY
STRUGGLE, AND THE STRUGGLE WILL BRING YOU STRENGTH
HOPE, AND HOPE WILL GUIDE YOU ALONG THE WAY
Life is beautiful, life is good, when you find it, hidden at the depths of your universal, specific, essential soul.
Do not squander your life, do not squander your flame! The flower of your heart withers if you do not water it. Water it without ceasing!
Life belongs to those who know how to tend it, not to those who squander it to the winds.
Give love, and expect nothing in return. You will receive.
Life is a permanent exchange. When one refuses to give, one obtains nothing in return. Life is an exchange in which each partner finds in the other his own benefit.
Walk boldly without fearing the obstacles in advance. The light you cause to shine guides you and helps you direct your steps away from the ruts in the path.
Love the light, beware of darkness and death. Press ever further into Life without fearing it, and you will discover magnificent landscapes.
Life alone can overcome suffering and torment. Life is not invented; it is discovered through audacity and through courage.
You desire harmony in a world where it does not exist. You desire Life in a world that every day puts Life to death. You desire harmony in a world thrown out of balance.
Life is to be rediscovered, Life is to be reinvented. It requires imagination, it requires courage — a great deal of courage.
Life is not made in a single day; one must seek it for a long time. Life is not found by chance along the way; it is found in action and in struggle.
Life is where one least expects to find it, at the very depths of your soul, hidden beneath centuries of culture and reasoning.
Life is a strange path to climb. It seems arduous and tortuous, yet it reveals to you at moments landscapes of breathtaking beauty.
Know when to stop and admire them. Know how to contemplate the landscapes your soul unveils as it searches for itself.
Life never stops. It continues to journey irresistibly towards the discovery of yourself and of others.
Life is a poem one never ceases to sing. Life is the song of beauty and of love. Life is a book of encounters. Life is a permanent exchange. Life is not a sad place where solitudes shut themselves away.
Life is yours if you dare. Life is yours if you know how to say no to the fantasies and fears that dwell within you.
LOVE, and Life will be yours. GIVE, and Life will be given back to you in return.
Life is the gift one makes to the unfortunate. Life is the gift one makes because one is full, and because one must give in order to appease one’s heart.
You give Life and you have Life. You are miserly with your treasure, and you have death and sorrow.
Death is the way of shadow, Life is the way of light. The way of shadow is that of the absurd and of emptiness, where only sparse plants grow, where the horizon is parched and arid.
Life is not there. Flee that way and take the other — the way that leads to light.
You must choose. To be the sun or to be the moon. You must choose: to illuminate or to reflect.
Life is not the same for one who waits upon others as for one who gives. You wish to shine, yet you dread your own radiance. You wish to shine, yet you dread the consequences of the light.
Light floods those who have chosen to shine. Light floods those who have chosen to give. It makes them beautiful and bestows beauty all around them.
Fear the light no longer. Do not fear the attachment and the joy of others.
Do not sacrifice your ideal to material things. Love and trust. Matter is inert; it cannot prevent men from growing. Only uncontrolled impulses and frustrated desires can prevent them from doing so.
Do not squander life. Be Life for others, and you will have Life — the Life given to you as inheritance, the Life He gives you as inheritance.
Give without taking shelter in your tower. Give without fearing the consequences of your gifts.
Life is a game. Life is a theatre. Life is the finest way to learn to succeed. Life is given to you that you may understand.
Love LIFE. Be your own master; that is the price of Life. Life gives — TAKE!
True Life is a river that has no use for the time that passes and holds it captive. True Life flows, sweeping in its infinite course the debris of the past and fragments torn from the present, lending to man’s illusory reality the dimensions of a dream.
Life — seek it deep within yourself, in the hidden part of your being, at the depths of deep memory. Seek it resolutely so that it may pass through the narrow lock of consciousness and refresh others like a calm and beneficent water that heals wounds and makes life more beautiful.
Life is a book you must learn to read. Life is a book in which you must know how to turn the pages at the right moment. Life is an eternal new beginning.
One must know how to lay down one’s work when it no longer suits one, in order to begin one that is more beautiful and more demanding.
Life is a fabric of beautiful colours. The truth is there, in the smile of the child, in his curiosity, his thirst to learn and to know.
Be a child in your heart, always ready to wonder and to love. Be a child in your mind, in your smile, in your joy. Be a child — remain fearless and ever trusting in others.
Refuse darkness and shadows, and always prefer the light.
1980
© Christine F. - Translation from French by Jérôme Nathanaël
© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël
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