Underneath the Heartbreak … there is Love
The challenges of the events and circumstances of our global community keep rolling on. We are probably not the first to declare, “These times are too crazy, too hard, too much suffering, fear, and uncertainty!” As challenging as these times are for us, such times are not unique to us. I suspect people around the globe have said and felt this for millennia – and they were correct for their time.
But these times are our times.
What are we to make of these times: the threat to American democracy; a global virus the response to which unleashed anger against our own; the continued need for social, financial, and racial equity; climate crisis; and now we watch as a sovereign nation undergoes blatant invasion for no provocation? People of Ukraine are dying, being maimed, separated from their loved ones, losing their homes, experiencing fear and loss that no one should have to know. And, of course, they are not the first.
What are we to make of this?
We as a human species are trying to figure out life.
I sense we are in the early stages of this endeavor. Sometimes we know how to live together, care for each other, do the right thing. Sometimes we do not.
What I see happening now in response to the invasion of Ukraine by Putin is our species responding from the best in ourselves. Global companies are withdrawing business association with Russia and her oligarchs; individuals from European countries are going to Ukraine to fight for their neighbor; Ukrainians are bravely defending their freedom; at home, our current deep political divisiveness is taking a unified pause over this invasion. The world recognizes this act of Putin as being deeply wrong.
This heartens me – a lot.
It tells me that underneath the juvenile self-absorption of our zeitgeist, there is honest caring. There is a reservoir of love within all of us, and it is being tapped right now. I hate that it takes a war, shootings of school children, the unjust killing of young black men, or toppling US buildings for this reservoir to be tapped and expressed.
We are trying to figure out life.
Even Putin is trying to figure out life. He may disagree with this; he may think (like others) that he alone has got it covered, but Putin too is struggling to figure it out. Not doing a great job - in fact, doing great harm. But because even Putin is a beloved child of God, a human imbued with Buddhanature, I believe he too inherently has a reservoir of love; his is just so thoroughly covered over and armored that he isn’t accessing it. He’s probably trying hard to deny it.
We are trying to figure out life, why we’re here, what is important, how to live together, how to access our individual and collective reservoirs of love.
Underneath all the heartbreak of our broken world, there is still love. We are seeing it right now. We see caring, compassion, love in action. It is still here, and it invites us to meet heartbreak and suffering with love and compassion in any way we can.
We are all trying to figure out life, and that definitely includes me.
What do you think? Do you see, feel, sense, believe in that reservoir?
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