Freud once said, “Love and work…work and love, that’s all there is… love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” As a normative statement about the good life, the claim can’t be true, yet as a description of modernity’s cornerstones, it is close enough.

The invitation comes from a rupture in our lives, a rock that shatters the illusion. Love, it is directly seen, is not all there is and neither is work. What is all there is, therefore?

A simple approach, naturally, is to use work to go beyond work. What, let’s ask, is the source from which all works arise?

Likewise, we can use self-possessive love to go beyond self-possessive love. What is the ground from which all forms of relating to one another emerge and upon which all stand?

What, to ask earnestly, is all there is? What is the cornerstone of all cornerstones? What is prior to all humanness?

Gate gate paragate…