Show Your Love!

Here we are with Valentines Day upon us and as I peruse the blogosphere, I see a lot of blogs about how to get through the day… Through the day. Through the day? Through. The. Day. I shudder when I see that.

I know there are people who may not have a significant other, but we have a day where we celebrate the most powerful experience a human can have, and there are folks out there who just want to get through it in one piece, unscathed. I get it. There was a time in my life when things would have had to get better before they could suck, but one of the lessons I took from those days was that every day, the world offered me many opportunities to feel good and see the good around me. It was me who chose to see who I wasn’t with, who I wasn’t dating, and who would never go out with me. I’m not sure when I realized that dressing up with a chip on my shoulder, a scowl on my face and customized black cloud wasn’t going to bring me what I craved, but at some point with box full of Tony Robbins tapes to guide me, I started to figure things out.

The world, it turned out, was a pretty spectacular place. I mean, let’s start with nature? No matter where I went, if I only thought about the power of nature, I was in a better mood. I could be in the middle of a city, look down, see a weed growing through a sidewalk and I was amazed. And a funny thing happened when I was done noticing nature. I began to notice people. I really looked at them for the first time ever. People are incredible. As the Tom and Ray Magliozzi, The boys from “Car Talk” would say, We have one make, two models. But the variety on those two models is flat out, off the charts beautiful. Beautiful in a way that you have to appreciate watching a woman walking on two feet in high heeled shoes. How does she do that with out taking a header on every single step? Or picking things up with your hand. Examining the dexterity to pick up a a car key and place it in a lock, or a heavy bundle of newspapers was like watching someone split the atom.

How could I look at these beautiful, marvelous creations and not light up like a Christmas tree? I found that as I first had appreciation and awe for people, followed by love for them, (Spoiler Alert, moment of clarity coming…NOW!) They were nicer, friendlier. For Christ’s sake, George H.W. Bush got elected on seeing a mystical “thousand points of light” and a kinder gentler nation, right before he went to war with Iraq.

Myself, I was probably still an emotional disaster and not ready for a significant other at that point, but the world I lived in saw I was getting better in spite of that, because I was willing to show it some love. So I know it can be tough, but rather than suffering through it, be amazed at people. Feel their differences from you and their similarities with you. Smile at people you don’t know, say “Hi” to a stranger, notice something and compliment it.

Love Rules the day today. Show Your Love to everyone and everything because It’s Valentines day. Show your Love because everyone has it to give with out running out, and everyone needs it to feel like a complete human. Show your love because your smile, or friendly word may lift a sad person and be the ignition for turning them around, and maybe their lives with it, but mostly, show your love because its a really kind habit to get into for yourself and the people you encounter. Besides, John Lennon & Paul McCartney said it’s all you need, and I believe them.

Be Kind – Sean

A New Hope

With homage to George Lucas, I’m borrowing his subtitle from Episode IV of Star Wars, because today 12-22-12 offers all of us a new hope. We’re still here. Alive, well and pretty much doing what we did the day before again, but that’s a choice not a sentence and I’m going to get right back to that point.

See it turns out after years of worry for some people, or wonder for others, the Mayans were wrong. Well, they were right in a sense, their calender did end and if they were here today, they would start a new one. But we didn’t experience a polar shift, deadly solar flares, fire raining from the sky, or a zombie apocalypse. You could make the argument that Eagles coach Andy Reid is a zombie. He’s been a dead man coaching since November and if you’ve heard him at a press conferences, then you know this guy is a zombie. And his play calling? Maybe that makes sense if you’re undead, but not if you’re among the living.

But let me get back to my point. Our lives continue and the world goes on, but are we going to live today and tomorrow like the yesterdays before it? We don’t have to, because its a choice not a sentence and that’s my point. Whether we thought the world was going to end or not, yesterday for good or for ill is gone, so how are we going to live today? Right now. Do we go to bed leaving our families, our communities, the world better than we found it? Do we see the face of our creator in all of his or her horrible disguises, as Mother Teresa used to speak of, and do we recognize the divinity of the person before us?

Today I have a new hope. I hope the first day of a new Mayan calender, which is supposed to be a time of peace and enlightenment, actually is. I hope every small act of kindness I perform or write about pushes us closer to a critical mass where kindness transforms itself from tenets we hear as children, to a natural behavior without reminders.  Kindness is within all of us. The news and politicians tell us otherwise, but we are kind and like the winter solstice, darkness, which envelopes us from time to time eventually gives way to more light each and every day.

So today as the light grows I have a new hope. Today I hope I recognize humanity not just in my friends, but in the people who are not so pleasant to deal with. I hope that I find chances to spread kindness in small ways and if the opportunity presents itself, large ways too. I hope that by doing that, I can affect a positive change in the people around me and spread kindness like a healing salve and that others will take the time and effort to do the same. Its not that hard to do either. creating cold fusion from the atom is hard. Being nice, honoring the humanity in the people we meet is on the whole pretty easy. Who knows, if the Mayans were right we might just have begun a whole new epoch where this will be the norm, and if the Mayans were wrong, or it was all just a bunch of mistranslated Pre-Columbian graffiti, then maybe we can start our own period of peace and enlightenment, one kind act at a time.

Be Kind  – Sean