It's been a while

I wrote my last of my 276 blogs in June last year, 2017. A lot happened in my life since then, we moved house, moved into a comfortable small villa in a retirement village, Judy, my wife, had a major spinal operation, which at the time I thought was touch and go, but it was successful, though she still has a long way to go before she recovers her enjoyment of life. I gave up blogging, because I thought 'Who cares?' it is a piece of self indulgence, but i read something today that I thought is worth sharing with whoever reads my blogs.
I am reading Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, a profound, thought provoking book, and in it he quotes Josiah Royce's The Philosophy of Loyalty. Royce wanted to why simply existing - why being merely housed, fed and safe and alive -seems empty and meaningless to us.  ... The answer, he believed, is that we all seek a cause beyond ourselves. Royce called this dedication to a cause beyond oneself loyalty. He regarded it as the opposite of individualism. The individualist puts his self-interest first, seeing his own pain, pleasure and existence as his greatest concern. For and individualist, loyalty to causes that have nothing to do with self-interest is strange. ...
In fact human beings need loyalty. It does not necessarily produce happiness, and can even be painful, but we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it we only have our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. ...
The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater.
Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, pp125-127