Tag: love
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No One Has Ever Loved Anyone
I love potent little phrases (it’s why I run a quotation-browsing website), and I recently came across a great one. It seems that Mignon McLaughlin once quipped: No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved. It bowled me over. Because it immediately struck me as both true and useful. First, […]
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What If Ignorance is Love’s Only Obstacle?
I’ve got a short enemies list. If I whittle it down as far as it can go, I think it contains one item: ignorance. But it wasn’t until today that it struck me directly that this relates very specifically to the one thing I could whittle my list of unimpeachably good things down to: love. […]
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Be Kind to Each Other
If you accept that you are mortal. If you see all living beings as kindred spirits. If you understand the value of “the Golden Rule” and find it to be the the only path worthy of consideration. Then there is nothing left to do but be kind. Kindness isn’t easy. And it’s not fun and light […]
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It’s Easier to Say Wise Things than Do Them
It is so much easier to say something sage-like and wise than to live out the implications of that wisdom. I touched on this a bit in my yearly review from last week, but it’s one of the core things that reading through this site regularly reminds me. Doing wise things requires actually facing up […]
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The Slow Revolutions of Love
Nonviolent revolutions aren’t clear and simple and swift; they’re typically exactly the opposite. Slow and halting and frustrating. Violent revolutions have a clarity. A, typically abusive, power structure is forcibly displaced through the expending of material and life energy. This can have a certain effectiveness and speed, and so inspires hope. And there are places […]
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“I’m Not Afraid of the Dark”
Dark has an interesting place in human experience. Many children’s first and most enduring fear is of darkness. I, to this day, get a little spooked in completely or unexpectedly dark places. Mythically and metaphorically, though, darkness is a lot more than just the absence of light. Darkness is a synonym for the unknown. For the […]
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What Is Love?
Love has a number of forms. There’s the love of a parent for their child. The love of friends for one another. The love of two people who are committed to each other romantically. The love of a keeper for their dog, cat, or other animal. But all of them, I think, have something in […]
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Loving the Mystery
There’s a lyric that’s been trapped in my head for nearly a decade. It’s from the song “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel. The lyric is this: “Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all.” It’s the last line in the song. The reason it’s stuck in my […]
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OPW: ‘Radical Love Gets A Holiday’
This last Monday, this country celebrated–to the extent that it celebrates any federal holiday–Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. In honor of the occasion, the New York Times ran an interesting essay by Sarah Vowell that I couldn’t help but agree with. Here’s what Dr. King got out of the Sermon on the Mount. On Nov. […]
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The Lives of Dogs
I will admit it: I am not the world’s best dog owner. In an average week, Lucky probably goes on no more than four walks. Surely this record isn’t atrocious enough to merit calling the local humane society, but it’s not too good either. And I get the impression from Lucky that it’s abysmal. When […]