Now take a deep breath and pay attention to how the fresh air, full of oxygen produced by the trees, fills your lungs. You can’t see air, but it’s always there.
Love is somewhat similar to air. It may be hard to see, but it’s a significant part of us and everything around us.
Under the pressure of life, experiencing hardship through personal relationships, and news packed with violence, conflicts, and wars, it is easy to lose sight of love and feel that there is no place for it in our lives.
In fact, to paraphrase Gandhi, our everyday life is full of moments of cooperation and generosity, including among complete strangers!
Love is embedded in our lives because it was encoded in our DNA through our ancestors’ evolution over the past few million years. Many scientists believe that love, in its broader sense, gave momentum to brain evolution.
Among our ancestors, there were groups who were focused on understanding and caring for each other, as well as those who didn’t put much effort into it. This is how the genes of conscience, affiliation, friendship, altruism, romance, compassion, and kindness were transmitted—in one word, the genus of Love.
The natural state of our mind is peace, harmony, and no stress. That’s when Love thrives. However, this natural state of being can be easily thrown off balance if, for example, someone gives us a bad critique at work or we stumble upon a moody neighbor.
That’s when we go into a state of soul homelessness; we leave our natural habitat—our natural state of being. We fall into the embrace of fear or anger, and love begins to look like a long-forgotten dream.
The worst is that, after a while, everything becomes normal, and even homelessness can become our home—just like we got used to shallow breathing, forgetting the fresh air.
Therefore, we need to go back to our home of Love. Let’s accept and believe in love in our own hearts, for it will support and protect us. Let us see and believe in others’ love, even if it’s hidden or they don’t express it enough. We need to believe in love, for it is as present and real as air. Let’s trust love to keep our souls alive the way we trust air to keep our bodies alive.
