The bests–whether they be the bests of life, love, arts experiences, personal experience, nature, etc.–usually centre around imagined and then lived-out possibilities. There are, of course, many possibilities, but so, too many limited and limiting contexts and situations. Think here of a physical handicap, a world war, a life of poverty, controlling spouses, people buying wholesale into screen culture or trying to live out advertisements, etc.
And there is always, too, the factor of the individual–how free he or she is from whatever limits and controls. One also has to remember that much that happens in daily life as well as in history has to do with manipulation, games or role-playing, power, and control. The individual is up against all of that as well as his or her own often self-imposed limits and limitations.(Blake called them “mind-forg’d manacles” in his famous “London” poem.)
And then there’s the matter of personal or (viewed somewhat largely) life choices–choice being the final key to activating possibilities. Generally, one has a better chance of activating choices for self and to achieve or actualize whatever desired possibilities. Whenever one tries to make choices for others, manipulation, power, politics, and control usually get into the mix. Which is why it is always fun and pleasurable when two individuals freely choose the same thing, one another, or a shared life. Even more remarkable is when an idea, cause, or values and beliefs draw people together in groups, though again there one can still find individual agendas; there is no guarantee that people are on the same page either in couples or groups. No two snowflakes are alike, after all.
I suppose what has interested and impressed me for so long and so much remain the possibilities and the power of individual will, imagination, and choice for achieving various goals or desires. This liberating process–despite all the manipulation and politics embedded in relationships, work, society, and the world at large–involving a person’s heart, mind, soul, and talents (something explored by so many writers and artists) remains of prime interest: that is, its many manifestations and the avenues to it.
Over time, the bests also happen more frequently when one accepts life as it is, self as one is, and others as they are, relinquishing manacling egoic control in the flow and chi of life process. In that, perhaps, the greatest freedom and an opening of doors to many more possibilities–especially gifts of self and actualized fulfilling and freeing possibilities, so many more than one could ever have imagined, wanted, or discovered otherwise.