What's wrong with love?

Really, what is wrong with more love in this world?

When marriage equality was ramping up, so many came out in support of my family, my love, and for all the families that looked like mine. So many agreed that LOVE IS LOVE. People were willing to say, “I may not know what it is like to live inside your life, or your love, but you deserve to have your love, your family protected. I support you and the life you live.”

I was so grateful for the outpouring of love. When my wife and I posted pictures from our last minute surprise wedding, we got almost 1000 likes and nearly as many comments. I mean, who doesn’t love love?

But, here is where it gets difficult for me to understand. At what point do we decide that love is no longer the answer? I will extend love (or tolerance) to someone who is experiencing oppression in this particular way, say the right to marry. But I cannot extend that same love and compassion to someone who is say, an immigrant seeking asylum, or an immigrant who is desperately seeking an opportunity to feed his or her family. What about a woman who has had a series of unimaginable things happen to her, who knows in heart that she cannot care for a child. What about all the children who were brought into the world unwanted, who have a different color skin than you, who aren’t under the age of 5, who are seemingly broken from the life they have endured… where do we decide the love stops? And doesn’t love mean offering help and support any way we can? Isn’t that simply being a good human?

Does it ever really serve our world to do anything but be more loving and more understanding. Does it every serve anything to not try, deeply try to be empathetic and see life through the eyes and experience of another?

At what point do we as humans decide that other humans don’t deserve our love and understanding? Yes, there are terrorists in the world. That is why we have some of the toughest vetting practices in the world. There are bad people born into your world every day, you likely co-mingle with the baddies out in the world from time to time unknowingly. That is part of the risk of simply being alive.

I just don’t see how it serves us to live in the space of fear and scarcity. I don’t see how it serves us to not want desperately to help others who are currently facing oppression. I don’t see how it serves anything to assume the worst of everyone. So what is really in your way? What are you really afraid of? What barrier have you set up against love?

Let’s break down walls.

We are all more alike than different. There is enough to go around. You have within you the ability to choose to see love and extend compassion. Every. Single. Day.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi