Strife is better than loneliness.

Strife is better than loneliness.
~ Irish Proverb

three things we absolutely need to know

There are only three things we absolutely need to know: what to believe, how to live, and what to pray for. 
The Apostles Creed answers the first question,
the Ten Commandments the second, and
the Lord’s Prayer answers the third. 
(attributed to Thomas Aquinas)

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features/pkreeft_ptofitall_nov04.asp
The Living Christ Is the Point of It All
Peter Kreeft
The point of Christianity cannot be contained in words because the point of Christianity is the living Christ. He is not an ancient ideal but a real person here and now, ready to barge in and transform our lives. Being a Christian is more like having your soul possessed by a spirit than having your mind clothed with new beliefs. It is more like being well-possessed than well-dressed. It is like being haunted by the Holy Spirit. We are haunted temples.
The love of God is the answer not only to (1) the quest for the supreme value–the summurn bonum–and to (2) the quest for the supreme reality-the fundamental principle of the cosmos-but it is also (3) the answer to a third quest, the quest for life's deepest meaning and purpose.
Kant said there were ultimately only three important questions:
(1) What can I know? (2) What should I do? (3) What may I hope?
What I can know is truth, truth about being. Since the ultimate nature of being is love–either in God or in some creature that reflects God–God's love is the answer to Kant's first question.
Love is also the fundamental value. It is the answer to Kant's second question, "What should I do?" On the two commandments to love God and neighbor "depend all the law and the prophets" (Mt 22:40).
Finally, love also gives my life meaning and purpose. It gives me a goal or a hope to shoot for. Hopelessness means purposelessness. Since the ultimate purpose of my life is to learn to love, love is also my hope.
What to Believe, How to Live, and What to Pray For
Thomas Aquinas said that there are only three things we absolutely need to know, and they correspond nicely with Kant's three questions:
what to believe, how to live, and what to pray for.
Aquinas then says that the Creed answers the first question, the Commandments answer the second, and the Lord's Prayer answers the third. Therefore if we fully understand just these three things, the Creed, the Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, we will know everything needful. What do these three things have to do with love?
On close inspection, each article of the Creed, each of the Commandments, and each petition of the Lord's Prayer is a form of love. They can be rightly understood only relative to that center.
. . .

the happy and unhappy

Writing in a letter to his brother in 1940, Lewis said:
“I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don’t."

http://www.cslewis.org/resources/studyguides/Study%20Guide%20-%20The%20Great%20Divorce.pdf