I spent all day and night yesterday with people — most of whom I’ve never met — from around the world.
We talked about everything — Love and fear, identity and isolation, gender and sexuality, memories and current affairs. Not to mention food, fun, movies, money, parents and people. We talked about things that, when I was younger, I was told people didn’t talk about “in public”. We talked about how Love helps heal and how Love connects us. And we did all this to celebrate the birthday of someone whom most of them never met and who has been gone for 27 years.
We did all this because of Love. We came in joy. We left in more joy. All because of Love.
And so I say to myself: If this is possible with this group of supposed “strangers”, isn’t it possible with every group of supposed “strangers”?
There’s a lyric in a song I love that says that the thing we’re all looking for is to be “nobody’s stranger anymore.” This isn’t just a pretty turn of phrase. When we see one another as strangers, as other than us, as separate from us, we’re not seeing through the eyes of Love. Because Love doesn’t see difference. Love only sees love. Love love.
All over the world — and certainly here in the US — there is heartbreaking utterly wrong violence happening in the name of race, class, ethnicity, religion, politics.
And yet, if you removed every single individual from their group mind, made them feel safe and loved and then asked them this question: Do you want the people you love to feel safe and loved? Every single person would answer in the affirmative. Every single person.
All any of us want is to love and to be loved. And yet people die senselessly every day because of fear which turns into anger or hatred or -isms that kill.
When I say that living Love isn’t optional, this is what I mean. When I say that every day we need to choose Love instead of fear, this is what I mean. When I say that we all need to become heart-centered practitioners to change this deeply-ingrained habit of fear, this is what I mean.
We need to learn to see nobody as a stranger any more.
I know that strangers can come together and find common ground through Love. I experience it all the time through my work and my wanderings. I know that when Love brings people together, they leave their differences that divide at the door. They show up in their hearts and we come together as heart-centered practitioners.
When we look at the horrible injustice and tragedy that is perpetrated by people to one another, if we think about the big picture, it can feel so daunting that we don’t know where to begin.
We begin with ourselves. We begin, as Michael Jackson sang, with the man in the mirror. And we begin with all our own imperfections and we turn them over to the unchanging love of Love that loves us all whole.
Living Love is not optional.
Living Love is not optional.
Living Love is not optional.
No matter what we see happening around us, the ripple effect of change starts with each of us. It starts with each of us living Love. 365/24/7. Every minute of every day.
Together.
We MUST love this world whole and #LoveViral.
Live Love.
It is NOT optional.
And if you don’t believe me. Listen to my dad. Please.