Mark Twain said: "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."
Neil Diamond has found his reason and wrote a romantic song in response. His purpose, or his answer to life's great question:
"Why am I here?" leaves no doubt. Diamond's answer and clear focus is that he is here to love another person, and only that person.
This song is a powerful reminder that to make a difference in the life of another human being, we must put aside our own needs and desires. To truly love another person, we must be strong and willing to endure pain, separation and even death.
It is very likely love also became a life's purpose for Mark Twain.
In 1859, a 23-year-old Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot’s license. Clemens had signed on as a pilot’s apprentice, and had been commissioned to write a series of comic travel letters He piloted his own boats for two years, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term “Mark Twain,” a boatman’s call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation.
In 1870, Clemens married the daughter of a wealthy New York coal merchant and settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where he continued to write travel accounts and lecture. In 1875, his novel Tom Sawyer was published, followed by Life on the Mississippi (1883) and his masterpiece Huckleberry Finn (1885). Bad investments left Clemens bankrupt after the publication of Huckleberry Finn, but he won back his financial standing with his next three books. In 1903, he and his family moved to Italy, where his wife died. Her death left him sad and bitter, and his work, while still humorous, grew distinctly darker. He died in 1910.
