Make Love Your Daily Practice
It is easy to feel helpless. Amidst this helplessness, it is easy to shut down and assume a position of inaction.
Conversely, this moment is also an opportunity to take small steps with love. To see the humans behind the numbers and live in a way that prioritizes human connection.
Great love infused into small acts adds a sense of stability. It adds purpose. It grounds us to show care. With a mindset of love, we can shift our attention away from the whirlwind of destruction around us and instead direct our energy toward where we can be helpful. Where we can contribute. Where we can take the steps needed to ascend from the chaos, both individually and collectively.
Every system is designed to get the results it gets. That is important to remember as we direct our rage at failing systems. What if, instead, we recognized our role in those systems and directed our love towards fixing and redesigning them for the output that brings us to a more equitable world?
A systematic overhaul is not the job of one person, but each person’s job is to find a way to improve upon an unjust world. Make it your job to act with love, even in the small things, especially in the small things.
Seek out the love in everything. If you find a corner of your world without it, commit to being the force that adds love in. Our greatest offering to the world is our small, daily acts. So, make them loving.
Add love into your exchanges. Cook with love and feel the love of the spring sun as it brings flowers to life. Add love into your life by adding more play to your day. Play with words or with your accessories. Write with your non-dominant hand. Give yourself time to not rush. Be mindful of the moments that bring your joy and find more like them. These small steps fill a day with more love and joy. They refresh us so we can see love in the details. Appreciate the love in the details of a mural.
Love doesn’t take place in systems. Love takes place in practice and intentionality and connecting and understanding. When we come from a place of love, we are slower to react and quicker to help. We are less likely to see fault and more likely to focus on a solution.
Love doesn’t need to be our grandest gesture, but it does need to be our daily practice. Without it, we will continue to bemoan the broken systems and the suffering around us. With it, we can focus on our individual role in changing those systems and imagining a more equal world.