A nation’ culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people – Gandhi
Love
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love: it is the prerogative of the brave. –Mohandas Gandhi
I know of only one duty, and that is to love. –Albert Camus
I read these two quotes and I start thinking about love. Why is it a duty and why are cowards incapable of exhibiting love?
It seems to me that without love life is very flat. There is no depth and there is not as much joy. Of course with love comes the possibility of pain. What if something happens to your loved one? What if you find that it is hard to sustain the love? These are just two possibilities that may be in the future for those that love. Love requires a lot of trust and work. There are moments when it gets fiery and scary. In the case of love between two people, sexual orientation has nothing to do with this; there is the fear of starting out. What if he or she says no? This is scary stuff and even more frightening what if he says yes.
Now we are talking about love between people but there is another love and that is for the world and your fellow human beings. Now this is fraught with danger too. Again it requires trust; trust that they will be willing to accept that love. Trust that those outside of your sphere will fight your love of the world, human beings, the animals, plants, and in general, nature. What if they are determined to destroy the planet or animals, pants, and nature? In the end this will destroy humanity. This is another situation that can become dangerous. If we look around this country we see the country divided and fighting over things that do not go to the soul of mankind. Once again a coward will back off and a courageous person will stand up and be counted. I am not suggesting violence. I am talking about will and desire. I am talking about the willingness to give an ounce of practice which is worth more than a ton of preaching. This is another quote I stole from Gandhi. Remember he was a man that moved a nation away from the most powerful empire in the world without any violence.
Now to the question of why it is our duty to love. If mankind is not to parish from this earth we must remember to love all people, animals, plants, and the very earth itself. We as a nation have been at war every day since the end of World War Two over 65 years. This is not an expression of love but rather it is an expression of greed and hatred. How do we get are people to support a war? We convince them that the enemy is hateful. This is not always true. People that believe in Islam don’t hate us but some people that happen to be members of that religion are committing acts of terrorism against us and many others in the world. But didn’t the Christian world do the same thing. What stands out in my mind are the Crusades. It was the belief of some Christians that if they didn’t conquer the world and remove the other faiths from the Holy City of Jerusalem they were not doing God’s will. This is only one example. It takes place over and over but we are more than willing to hate others and think they are evil and we are not evil. The end result is thousands of dead people. The world is never saved. That is why it is our duty to love. For those of you that are religious then check your holy books and you will see that is what you are commanded to do. Without love nothing can last.
Peace, howie
Categories: Life, Writing
No Comments »
« This is a fine mess! | Home | Why don’t we ever learn »
