Love, Sweet Love

There are things we may find joy in knowing.

The difference between a toad and a frog, butterfly weed and bee balm, an indigo bunting and a blue jay; and that swan offspring are called cygnets and baby sandhill cranes are called colts.

We may benefit from understanding that we’ll make mistakes, forget people’s names, say or do things we regret; and that the worst part of our lives will be the unanticipated death of friends and family.

It’s likely we’ll walk thousands of painful miles before realizing that we’re all connected: your life and my life, all life. The lives of the crawfish, the lions, the elm trees, the oyster mushrooms. Your child and my child.

There are things we may want to do.

Enjoy the laugh of a northern flicker and the drumming of a ruffed grouse; admire a mackerel sky and call a cumulus cloud by its correct name; and rejoice in the birth of a baby.

We can answer the phone when it rings, respond promptly to emails, apologize when we’ve done something wrong, say please and thank you; and we can respect people who do not want company on days when their grief feels too heavy for them to get out of bed.

We can accept that some people do not act ethically. That some people can lie and cheat as easily as they comb their hair. That there are people who believe in worldwide conspiracy theories, like the ones who say the Holocaust didn’t happen, or the world is flat, or who deny global warming.

We can celebrate joyful, unexpected encounters with strangers, experience a lift in our steps from helping a painted turtle cross a busy road to lay her eggs, and enjoy the feeling of floating we get when we forgive someone whom we’d made our enemy, or the relief we experience when someone finally listens to what we’re saying.

But we shouldn’t have to identify our child from a facial photograph because their body is too broken, or receive their backpack that is burned, covered with ash, and splattered with their blood, or spend our sleepless night picking out an urn for them.

There are things we can agree on.

We can agree that elephants have long trunks, donkeys have long noses, and both have soulful brown eyes; that snakes and bats have useful purposes and neither will go out of their way to harm us, and yet some people will go out of their way to harm them. And some people harm others simply with their words or actions.

We could try to agree that we’ll all disagree on different issues at different times in our lives, that we will change our minds multiple times in our lifetime, and that both are not only okay but normal.

We can agree on the importance of acknowledging people with a nod, their name, a smile, or a wave.

We can agree that it hurts people when we don’t see them, don’t listen to them, or pretend they don’t even exist. We can stop thinking that being indifferent to others is cool.

We can all agree that parents should die well before their children do and that pets should live forever.

We can try to understand what others choose to do, without judgment, whether it’s eat organic, participate in social media (or not), wear cotton or polyester, dye their hair (or not), run or walk, love or hate the government, shop their local co-op or Walmart, attend church or spend hours in meditation.

Can we agree that people are people and come in all different sizes and colors and speak different languages, yet all have feelings and emotions? And that being kind is always going to trump being snarky or mean?

We could also agree that life isn’t always fair, that bad things happen to good people, and that telling others how they should feel or what they should do isn’t helpful.

Can we get a collective hallelujah on how lucky we are that our eyes opened this morning, that we have language to communicate with and roofs over our heads?

Can we agree that the most important thing in our lives, permeating everything, is love, sweet love, and try to spread more of it around?