Love is a verb. I'm sure of this. And because love is a verb -- an act of doing, a state of being -- we're meant to focus on the loving, as opposed to waiting around for the being loved. I believe that every person has an innate capacity to love, to be the ultimate lover of our world and the people in it. For me, it is the reason for living. No matter what you believe, to which pantheon you may subscribe, or to whatever philosophies you hold in your heart, love is a sense of purpose, a gift bestowed upon us all by that moment when order was born from chaos and we became.
I have also come to learn that hate, equally powerful and also instinctively secured in our collective consciousness, is a far easier verb to demonstrate on a daily basis. After all, it's undemanding to say "you're different," "you're wrong," "you're doing things or living in a way that is unacceptable." It doesn't take effort to judge, and it doesn't take strength to elevate ourselves, to act as though we have it figured out and the infamous they do not.
But I've recently begun to really appreciate the challenge of "I love you." I'll admit, it's easy to say it -- rolls off the tongue like bubble gum. The real trick is, if you say you love someone, and you really mean it, you better be prepared to back it up. That kind of love, the cosmic uprooting of every negative thought and preconceived notion, the ultimate gift, is unconditional, unrelenting and all-encompassing.
If you're going to even try to tap the tip of the iceberg of that kind of love (because let's face it, we're all human and nobody has the capacity to love with the perfection of that which is beyond humanity), you are going to have to be strong -- a warrior. You're going to have to love everybody, see the potential and the beauty in each and every individual you meet. This requires a willingness to forgive, to love no matter what may have been acted against you -- by far the hardest part, and one that I'll admit to struggling with regularly.
But here is what I know. If I can love like this, even just a little, as much as I am capable of doing, knowing there will be times when my love falls short and that this is okay because I am, after all, only human, then I will have fulfilled what I was put on this pale blue dot to do. In the end, love is the only action worth taking.