Your Challenge for Valentine's Day (and Every Day): Find Something to Love in Everyone

It's Valentine's Day in many countries and millions of people, young and old, are focused on love. Mostly, romantic love. Love for our husbands, wives, and significant others. Love for our crushes. We exchange chocolates and flowers and jewelry and cards and valentines to show our love.

This Valentine's Day (and every day), I challenge us:

Let's find something to love in everyone.

I can’t remember the exact wording of the quote or its source, but a few years ago I read a quote in a book on Buddhist philosophy that basically said “To truly love, you must love everyone.” The thought that I should actually proactively work to love everyone – not just those in my family or circle of friends – but EVERYONE really struck me and has stayed with me to this day. I’ve always loved animals and the natural world, but because of some trauma in my childhood, I grew up not liking people for the most part. And, what I’ve learned — and continue to learn — about all the horrific things that people are doing to each other, animals and the planet can make it easy to despair for humanity as a whole.

But what I've learned in my humane education studies has led me to open my heart much wider. To focus on the good in humanity, to understand that people are much more than certain habits or choices. To acknowledge that most people are making the best choices they know how at the time.

To create a truly humane world, we need to look deeper than the surface foibles and flaws to connect with other people. As Anne Frank says, "Despite everything, I believe that people really are good at heart."

So let's find something to love in everyone. Maybe the person who cut in front of us in line has a beautiful voice. Maybe the oil industry executive supports human rights causes. Maybe the dictator is kind and gentle with children. Maybe our neighbor who never has anything nice to say and always complains about the noise your kids make grows gorgeous vegetables and flowers.

There IS something to love in everyone. So let's start looking today.

~ Marsha

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