Let’s Talk About Love

I have been having a lot of conversations lately about love.

That, in itself, is not unusual for me, but the nature of the conversations has shifted in terms of frequency and focus.

These conversations were sparked a year ago when I attended the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center. The focus of the summit was to bring together women from around the world — the well-known and the not-so-well-known — to share their stories of making their way in the world, many having survived the most tragic and unspeakable circumstances. In addition to the names that drew a crowd (Hillary Clinton, Meryl Streep) were women from Ukraine, Syria, Congo, Rwanda and the Middle East among other places, who had witnessed and experienced the worst violence imaginable. They shared the stage with renowned journalists who helped them tell their stories.

There was one moment on the stage that I will never forget. A woman from Congo told her story and the audience was stilled by her account of the violence she had endured. After she finished the reporter asked, “What can we do?”
Her reply made my heart fill up and leak out as tears.
“We can love one another.”
The reporter pressed her gently, “But what can we DO?”

I have shared that moment with so many people because it is both simple and profound. What if that were the real answer? What if it would make a world-changing difference if we, indeed, just began to love one another? Without exception.

I have often thought about myself, it is easy for me to love. I grew up surrounded by a loving family, received a great education, have been blessed with loving friendships and relationships and afforded relative happiness, peace, joy, health and abundance. If I choose to love, big deal; it is what has been given to me. But I listened to many women on that stage mention love as a crucial element to creating solutions. When they spoke, it was with a moral authority that was persuasive.

I have many “hippie, peace” friends. who talk about love all the time. When we talk about love, though, people don’t always take it seriously. Recently I was sharing some wisdom with my son that I had received from a friend he had not met. He asked me, “Where’d you meet her?”
“Drum Circle.”
“Hippie!” he smirked at me, as if that were reason enough to dismiss the advice.
But a while ago I met a scientist who told me that he felt that the greatest untapped source of energy in the world was love.

Not a hippie.
A scientist.

This started me thinking about the nature of love, not merely as a concept or a good idea, but as a measurable force of energy, capable of measurable transformation.

What if “Love one another” was not just an aspirational goal for a good life, but an actual formula?

My father was a man who envisioned, articulated and acted to create a fairer, more just world based on the teaching of “Love one another.” I grew up admiring and emulating him as best I could. My Mom was a counterbalance to his lofty vision. She was an emergency room nurse. She used to tell me that you can only help one person at a time — the person right next to you. My mother once said to me, “When you were 7, you thought you were going to change the world. When you were 17, you thought you were going to change the world. You are 27. When are  you going to realize that you are never going to change the world?!”

She died before I was 37, so that conversation ended.

When I was younger I always preferred the path of my Dad, but recently I have come the see the value in both paths. I still believe that it is important to hold the larger vision but I think my path forward is to connect, as my mother said, one person at a time with deep love. Wherever I am, whoever I am with, that is my mission: to love and connect and appreciate the moment, hoping that each of us goes forward better for the connection.

Gandhi called his autobiography “My Experiments with Truth.” I think my goal now is experiments with love. They won’t be peer-reviewable in a way that might be convincing to my science-minded friends, but maybe I can help create a force that will at least be felt and measured by those around me.