It was early morning and the sun was just peeking over the horizon. There was enough of a chill in the air to prompt me to wrap a fluffy throw wrapped around my legs as I glanced out my window to catch a glimpse of children and their parents waiting for the school bus to arrive. Somehow it felt as though it was going to be a glorious day as I munched on my breakfast and sipped my tea.
I had quickly completed the challenges of all of my word games and went to Facebook to post birthday greetings to one of my former students and to alert reader to my blog for the day. Then I began to read comments from friends who were also up before the dawn.
The first thing that really caught my eye was a new photo of a dear friend and her daughter. It was a beautiful head shot of the two ladies that literally captured the love and devotion between the two of them. I was overcome by emotion as I gazed at the image and realized how vividly obvious their connection to each other was. I was literally overcome with tears. That picture was as glorious as a symphony, a great work of art. It literally changed the course of my thoughts from the mundane to a kind of meditation on life and the world around me.
Perhaps because I was in a state of optimism I began to see each new post that I read far beyond superficialities. There were joyful images of a couple celebrating their anniversary at the beach with family, another of the wedding of a young couple laughing and dancing with joy. Then came the image of a three month old baby girl with a proud description of life with her from her father. It was as though I was looking into the very souls of the people whose faces and stories had been left to brighten my day and fill my attitude with hope.
I continued my journey along my Facebook wall and saw a former student who was celebrating a new hairdo that left her beaming with a kind of confidence that only comes from loving herself and the people around her. I cried again when I came across a heartfelt remembrance of a friend’s visit with her aging brother who is beginning to show signs of forgetfulness. Then I read a moving newsletter from the historian Heather Cox Richardson in which she celebrated the majesty of the United States of America with all of its diversity and creativity.
Somehow it felt as though I was receiving a moving and spiritual message from the universe insuring me that we the people of the world are ultimately going to be alright. It will be our love and joy that will carry us through the darkest of times just as it always has. There is an innate goodness in each of us and in the land around us that pushes us in the direction of what really matters.
It is easy to become distracted by things that are meaningless. Sometimes it is difficult to see and understand the power of simply accepting and caring about people and the places where we live without judgement and negativity that bears on us like a heavy burden. We are made to feel that the world is a dystopian nightmare of anger, crimes, hate and wars.
Certainly those things do exist but they are not the inevitable lot of humankind. It is in the unfiltered love of one individual for another that we find the true nature of people. It is in accepting those around us just as they are, seeing their beauty and worth without commands that they be one way or another that we thrive together. The bonds between us should be stronger than words and beliefs that threaten to drive us apart. We should be able and willing to see the heart and soul of each other rather than only the superficial differences that bother us.
That three month old girl that I saw must be allowed to become truly herself with only love and encouragement helping her to know what that might be. That old man who is losing his memory is still the person that he has always been and his worth is as great as ever. Our nation is a conglomeration of many people of many shades and beliefs. It is a beautiful patchwork quilt of diverse ecosystems and dreams.
Our greatness comes not in defining a perfect person or perfect world but in a willingness to love and cherish and share the talents and ideas and beauty of each and every individual without trying to make them fit a mold that works for us. The only concept of living together that we need is the one that allows the freedom to be different and still love each other.
When I see those images I see the way that we get past the rancor that sometimes seems to be the natural way of things. It is not so much in protecting ourselves from those who differ from the ways we like to do things, but in seeing the good even in those that we struggle to understand. The meaning of life is found not in the moments when we all agree but in those in which we celebrate how wonderfully different and yet alike we are.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 