Becoming Love

I’ve always been an optimist. Still, when I was much younger, concepts like “positive thinking” seemed wise but not very attainable. I hadn’t learned how to access the secret code. And of course, when you’re young and the world is exciting and challenging, stretching every fiber of your being in all kinds of dramatic ways, advice like “look on the bright side” feels insignificant, even powerless, alongside your intense concerns.

The thing is, after a good share of life’s trials and tribulations, I’ve learned a few things. (Funny how that inevitably happens.) One of them is that “thinking positively” really is much simpler and much more effective than I’d imagined way back when. It’s a choice. It’s a decision. It changes everything. Our thoughts then become an attitude and can make life a very different, and better, place.

And, for me, it’s all inescapably tied up with love… a word restricted to a fault by some and used in meaningless excess by others. But of course, it’s not just a word, it’s a state of being that places life in another orbit, a very different, and better orbit. Love is a feeling, an action, and an energy that lives in the root of our being, able to wind around our means and reach out to the tippy ends and edges and way beyond. Love is everything worth anything.

At some point I latched on and haven’t let go of the notion that love transcends all else. When life pulls me down, when it throws me against the wall, I can punch back with love. I know it’s there, love’s essence ~ this great well of God-like, Great-Spirit, Divinely Intelligent, Universal Magnificence – that I can tap into for sustenance. I believe we all can.

It’s an amazing thing, love. There can never be too much.

And so a few lines flowed out the other night (which prompted this whole little essay). Thought I’d share them. (With love.)

Becoming Love

Love someone,
Let yourself be loved,
Do all things with love ~
Work with love,
Sing with love,
Speak with love,
Share with love.
Let love rise like the sun
in your heart
And settle behind your eyes
as the sun goes down.
Drink love into your water,
Pray love into your woes,
Breathe love into your very bones ~
Become love.

Just Love.

– Patricia Saxton