Everyday Canvas

Loving All Humanity

Prompt: Imagine yourself loving one person very much, any person, like a parent, a sibling, a child, a mentor, a lover, or a friend. Think of that love as a feeling. Can you apply that same feeling to your community, to everyone you know, to your nation, to the billions of people of the world, no matter what? Can this be possible, ever?

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I asked this question to our group because it was asked of me, once, and I was stumped. It would be heaven if we could love everyone with the same intensity and with the same thoughtfulness; however, given our human nature and the trying circumstances that keep coming up, this is not possible. It could also be that some of us cannot handle intense and concentrated love. We only manage what we can.

No offense to the believers of a different view, but I don’t think even God loves all of us with the same intensity and in the same manner. Even if He did, we are humans, and we are not perfect. We can’t expect ourselves to compete with or match the divine.

Having said that, the best thing about being human is other humans. As humans, we do fight for one another and stand up for those of us who are downtrodden whether we know them or not or we are related to them in some way or not or they belong to the same group, nation, or race with us or not. Those who don’t are the ones who carry a fear in them, a fear that can consume them alive if they don’t overcome it.

I believe if we could get rid of our hates, dislikes, and prejudgments of people, we would be on our way to implementing a universal love. Coming back to me, it is true that in the past, I have been hurt by people or seen them hurt others, and for that, I liked them a bit less. Be that as it may, I only really hated one person in my life: Osama Bin Laden. Then, even him, I didn’t know personally. I hated him for what he did, not only to the USA but more so to his followers. Following a mistaken and misguided being, surely, hurts the follower psychologically, spiritually, and in very many other ways than his victims.

I am quite sure some part of love for other humans, what the ancient Greeks called the agápē, is mostly innate and it is usually effortless in little children...until they are taught the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ On the other hand, I don’t know how we can teach love as love is a feeling, but it can be encouraged from birth on. After all, for what we know, we pass through this world only once, and it would be to the greater good of everyone if we encouraged our hearts to stay on the path of love.