Dear Rumi, your words are more powerful than any pen that has come since you, thank you for teaching me...
On my way home today, I stopped at the gas station to get milk. A group of young boens (boy/ men) were in front of me. When a cashier freed, they offered me their spot in line. I neglected, knowing it was rightfully their turn; the cashier rang up their order, they left, and I placed my milk on the counter. The cashier informed me that the group of boens in front of me had paid for my milk, and I was free to go. This act reminded me of a kindness so pure, and so needed; a kindness rooted in a love rarely seen.
Love isn't something only to be comprehended by hippies or potheads; I am neither of those, and I feel as if I've learned love in a way that is unsettling and intensely moving. I don't speak of love as seen in romantic relationships, I speak of love that is necessary among us. The heroes of this world... Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr...did not speak of division, wars, money, power; no, they advocated for communion; the kind embodied only after we learn to love.
I will not attempt to define this love because I believe we each have a string that plucks uniquely, but I will encourage you to find your pick and play your own guitar. To be heartbroken for the evils and injustices in this world is to know love, to do something about it is to give life to love, to breathe passionately in and out, the stories of our communities (both locally and globally) is to make love. It is not our duty to gain, consume, or achieve tangible greatness; it is our duty to love.
Lately, I've learned to embrace gray. Gray is culturally seen as wishy-wash, indecisive, and undefined. However, I see gray as all, a color that contains some of each us, a color made when we mingle, and a color pulsating in the lifeblood of every creature when we intertwine.
We must stop promoting one, and start seeking what is us all; to love is to know and to know is to be free.
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