Free The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved by Matthew Kelly

activities that help us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves. We must choose them, and that choosing requires discipline.
    Are you thriving? Or are you just surviving?
    When are we most fully alive? When we embrace a life of discipline. The human person thrives on discipline.
    Discipline awakens us from the hedonistic stupor of modern popular culture and refines every aspect of the human person. Discipline doesn’t enslave or stifle us; rather, it sets us free to soar to unimagined heights. Discipline sharpens the human senses, allowing us to savor the subtler tastes of life’s experiences. Whether those experiences are physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, discipline elevates them to their ultimate expression. Discipline heightens every human experience and increases every human ability. The challenge of our essential purpose (to become the-best-version-of-ourselves) invites us to embrace this life-giving discipline.
    Is discipline, then, to be considered the core of the human experience? No. The life of discipline is proposed not for its own sake, but, rather, as the key to making us free. Discipline is the key to freedom. It is easy to give in to the allure of the momentary pleasures that this world so readily offers, but all great men and woman know the value of delayed gratification. The heroes, leaders, legends, champions, and saints who fill the history books knew how to embrace discipline.
    One of the great challenges of the art of living is to learn to discipline ourselves, but at this moment in history, gratification seems to be the master of most people’s hearts, minds, bodies, and souls. We find ourselves enslaved and imprisoned by a thousand different whims, cravings, addictions, and attachments. We have subscribed to the adolescent notion that freedom is the ability to do whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want, without interference from any authority. Could the insanity of our modern philosophy be any more apparent?
    Freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want. Freedom is the strength of character to do what is good, true, noble, and right. Freedom is the ability to choose and celebrate the-best-version-of-yourself in every moment. Freedom without discipline is impossible.
    Is freedom, then, the core of the human experience we call life? No. Love is the essence of life. Love is life’s great joy and her greatest lesson. Love is the one task worthy of life. We busy ourselves with so many things, while the one great task we set aside, ignore, neglect. Love is your task—to love yourself by striving to becoming the-best-version-of-yourself, to love others by encouraging them and assisting them in their quest to become the-best-versions-of-themselves, and to love God by becoming all you were created to be.
    But in order to love, you must be free, for to love is to give your self to someone or something freely, completely, unconditionally, and without reservation. It is as if you could take the essence of your very self in your hands and give it to another person. Yet to give your self—to another person, to an endeavor, or to God—you must first possess your self. This possession of self is freedom. It is a prerequisite for love, and is attained only through discipline.
    This is why so very few relationships thrive in our time. The very nature of love requires self-possession. Without self-mastery, self-control, self-dominion, we are incapable of love. We want to love, but without self-possession we are simply unable to do so. We are not free. We do not possess ourselves and so we cannot give ourselves. As a result, we preoccupy ourselves with all the externals of relationships and call those love.
    The problem is that we don’t want discipline. We want someone to tell us that we can be happy without discipline. But we can’t. In fact, if you want to measure the level of happiness in your life, measure the level of discipline in your life. The two are directly