What does love mean? The answer will differ depending on who you ask. If someone is alone, emotions will pour out for a partner, a friend, or a family member no longer in their life. If they have children, parental love moves them.
But what about the other kind of love that life gives you? Take a stranger with sullen eyes and unkempt appearance you always see, but quickly pass them by. “Poor soul. Tomorrow I’ll bring some change to give them,” you think. You forget the change day after day, and one day, you don’t see that stranger again. Do you ever wonder what happened? Do you take that change and give to the next unhoused stranger? Or, what about a dear friend’s actions and words that destroyed what you’ve built? You stand paralyzed. There’s no instant fix, except to take a deep breath, and start all over, one painful step at a time. Do you realize change is good, even though patience and will-power are tested? Believe me, I’ve stood at the doors of all these precipices, ranging from love, anger, despair, and regret. I wish I could change so much or had listened more to my intuition.
The love for family is easy for me. They are a part of my DNA, my life, my soul—and without them, I’d be completely lost. The love for friends, who have stood by me with compassion, understanding, and acceptance of who I am—is, and will, always touch me.
But what I struggle with, and to be honest, is the difficulty to love someone who can’t and won’t say the words, “I’m sorry.” It’s either no admission of their inward guilt, shame, ignorance, or willful denial of what is plain and clear, as one being to another. The refusal to repair what has been done, and settle on the other person’s fault, is a reminder of how the world is shattering into an unlivable existence.
As an observer, on a quest writing a collection of stories about human nature, I’m unable to shake the ugly shade of love in my home country. My silent tears observe racism and unforgiveness against people reaching for hope, to touch the sun’s rays of tolerance. When friends turn on friends, when differences are stamped out for more important values and authority, when countries tug and pull at each other, and when stories are written record a darkness replacing the sun’s rays—we have to, and need to: listen and stop a viral madness.
Love, tolerance, compromise, and the words, “I’m sorry”, can’t be held to the same standard as hate, self-service, and lies—if so, then the deepest shade of love is no color at all.
Test
Cindy, Life is a test.
Thank you for your powerful and inspirational words! I love the poetry of “…people reaching for hope, to touch the sun’s rays of tolerance.” And “…the deepest color of love is no color at all.” Thank you.
May we awaken to our oneness.
Much love ❤️
Eliza, as you know me, my words come from the deepest part of my perception of what I’ve observed and feel. I hold out hope for us all, that what is being seen and felt, is a removable veil covering the good we can rise to achieve. Thank you for the olive branch you’ve extended to me.
Dearest Cheryl, I’ve been going to reply to this for days, but the world keeps intervening. Thanks for your compassionate words about the world’s current frightening state of being. Dangerous might be a good description. May we all find a way to live in harmony while stopping the violence against humanity. The film “Unbearable Lightness of Being” based on the book by Milan Kundera comes to mind more for its title than its story. God be With Us….
Dear Donna, I’ve wondered how divided the country has become and WHY. It seems that a leader and those who sit at the same table, take pride in name calling, bulling, insulting, and turning off words that could heal, offer hope, and bridge differences. I’ve come to the conclusion, this is not the world, in which, I can change the actions of such toxicity. I can do my part and hope in a small way, I’ve made a difference. Depending on someone else to do the right thing nowadays seems hoping for a miracle, instead of making that miracle happen, yourself.
Indeed, dearest Cheryl. As I look out at the pristine, snow-covered Grizzly Peak, I think of how besmirched our country has become, and wonder how (despite daily prayers requesting peace and the removal of all evil from our government) it can ever be healed. Like you, I am flummoxed by what I read about, witness and see first hand that defies the goodness that used to typify this country’s aims… May those blue skies coupled with the flock of robins nesting in our trees be a sign that change is coming… and may it only be for the GOOD of ALL to cleanse not only our land, but all countries around the globe. Amen!
Dearest Donna,
I’ve overcome many challenges at this point in my life. I have a freedom that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. I see the same blue skies as you do, and welcome the same seasons, but what is different—is what culminates beneath. There’s a spirit of unification. I thought the country I was born in, would forge forward, in a time, when so many positive achievements were possible. But divisions grow faster than weeds. Good is a reality keeping hope alive. Yet, I witness hope’s thread thinning and frayed on its blanket. What can change—I think a mindset within the masses, looking towards the ideology that strength is not in belligerence, but in roadmaps bridging mankind’s survival together.