It’s a hard world out there, isn’t it? I’m feeing a little beaten down by it this week. Insults and fury seem to have traded places with kindness and empathy. Sometimes I feel so discouraged by it all that I don’t want to emerge from my safe shell.
But then I remember that the world needs sensitive people like me. And you, too.
One of the reasons I write books (I don’t often advertise this one) is because stories cultivate empathy in their readers. Empathy is becoming ever more important for this state in which we find our world today and, sadly, ever more diminished. Stories help heal that gulf between Me and Them. And readers like you are the ones who step into the gap.
What many in our world often forget is that no one hears us when we are mean. We become a clanging cymbal, a sounding gong, a drone in the ears of our fellow, honorable, beloved people. What we need is to torch our assumptions and stomp (or perhaps dance?) on their ashes, because they don’t belong in respectful conversation. They don’t belong in a loving humanity.
Here are three things I tell my sons in heated situations:
1. Take some deep breaths until you feel calmer. (If it takes days, give it days.)
2. Remember who you are—strong, kind, courageous, but mostly son (or daughter).
3. Love is the whole and more than all.
My 7-year-old created that picture above this message. He wrote the words on a piece of heart-shaped notebook paper. I know it’s naive (I’ve never claimed to be anything else), but I would like to see his words become a possibility, a dream with strong, beautiful, tireless legs—but in order for that to happen, we must first let down our walls and invite others in. We must unlock our guarded hearts. We must become unafraid of being hurt, ridiculed, beaten down because of our improbable, unquenchable love.
We must learn to forgive and accept ourselves so we can learn to forgive and accept others.
“Finish each day and be done with it,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson. “You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
Remember who you are. Strong, kind, courageous, but mostly? You are simply son or daughter. There is nothing you have to do today or any other day to prove that you are worthy of love. You were born worthy.
May you end each day knowing that you have loved well. You have loved bigly. You have loved truly.
