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On September 9, 1981, I wrote the below paragraph in a letter to Jodie We had known each other a mere three months.

“I once told you that it is terribly important for you to believe in me – and while my life is a chronicle of failure and tragedy, I’ve never failed a single individual who believed in me. Perhaps more should make my world tick, but I strive harder, work longer when there are stakes on the table. When I walk out that prison front gate, and I most assuredly will one day, I need for you to be there and to know that you believe in me. I will climb any mountain or surmount any obstacle for you. Some men climb mountains because they are there and they see a challenge in it but in a hundred years it is all academic. But it will not be academic if I climb that mountain for you and will be able to look into your eyes and say, ‘I did it for you.’ That is the significance of life, and, yes, as Sartre has written, death may rob it of that significance, just as the beach deprive the single grain of sand any significance. But for that blessed instance that I am able to stand there, hold you in my arms, and stare into your, that will be all the significance I need in life. In fact, no one should expect anything more.”

This morning, some 43 years later, I shared another of the tens of thousands of moments Jodie and I have experienced together—holding each other, looking into the other’s eyes, and knowing that as the sand eases down in the hour glass life has been significant for us. Our love—the very existence of love itself—rejects Sartre existentialism teaching that we are born of nothing, live for nothing, and die into nothingness. The love we have for a spouse, parent, a child, a sibling, a relative, or a friend—and even a pet we cherish with love—makes this life significant.

With tragedy all around us, and there is so much of it in today’s world, human love is still alive and rescuing each of us in our own way.

I made a promise of love to Jodie 43 years ago. That love has never wavered, not in a single moment.

The significance of that is: a promise kept.