Confusion ad restlessness seem to be the order of the day so it seems like a good idea to try to bring to mind and recreate the reasons that I first took up the path to begin with.
I think it would be fair to say that my initial impetus to take up the practice was to find some kind of relief from suffering. For most of my life since I began my adolescence I have been struggling to overcome intense feelings of fear, anxiety and an unrelenting sense of the meaningless and futility of life. I can unreservedly say that the Dhamma has helped me to understand the transience of fear and has gifted me with a sense of purpose: to develop the heart to the point where it no longer suffers in the rounds of birth and death.
In the interim many other motives and half-motives have crept in and, if there is anything that is tiresome about my practice, it is no doubt the weight of these accretions. I was initially going to run through the other reasons why I took up the practice but now realize that, if I am to be a person of integrity, the desire (chanda) to be free of suffering is really where it all begins for me.
Sabbe satta sukhita hontu!
Cattāri Brahmavihārā 
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