Throughout history love has shown itself to be a rare, atypical, and new revolutionary way of thinking. Blossoming from it — paths of action that stand up to conventional wisdom and serve the greater good of humanity.
While acts of love may often seem radical or counter to what’s popular, the way toward love always makes sense. The simple principles of patience, integrity, honesty, kindness, peace, respect and empathy are very practical behaviors within everyone’s range of capabilities. When love feels like a leap, these are rational steps you can take.
Jesus Christ, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King — are a few of the people who have stood out in the history books and are what I would call Master Artists of Love. They are extraordinary examples of loving action. Rebels and idealists who all inspired the world in their own right — ideas of liberation, salvation and freedom. They pushed people to see they had the capacity to love beyond themselves and to use love as a force to create ripples through humanity. They created significant changes by inspiring powerful movements founded on the core principles of peace and nonviolence. They suffered and struggled, but always stood up for their own truth using love as the compass. Even when the world wasn’t ready, they demonstrated love as one’s greatest strength and a way forward.
What also piques my curiosity is that acting in love seems to require creative solutions. It’s not always your first idea that’s best to act on when encountering a wrong, injustice or social issue — in fact, it may be the opposite direction — to fight, attack, defame, destroy, disown or ignore it with indifference. Acting in love takes a rather thoughtful solution and bravery to follow through. Whether they gathered crowds to make a speech, began a march, made salt in defiance, offered forgiveness or befriended the enemies and outcasts — in every case or scale of their action, they had a dream — a vision of love, truth, and fairness blossoming on earth.
In crucial and challenging times, these men are examples of humans who showed that love was an alternate route, a choice of action that could benefit all of us. They are certainly monumental historical figures but that shouldn’t be your excuse to be lazy in your own potential to learn and contribute love to the world. You don’t have to be a self-proclaimed messiah to show love and set an example, even as a humble ordinary human you have the capacity to shine love and light into the world, which is what I would imagine each of them was trying to empower others to comprehend.
Gandhi wasn’t a god. He was a lawyer, an educated man who found the injustices of his toned skin and the suffering of fellow Indian people to be utterly unfair and unacceptable. He made his stands. He was active, feisty, and determined. But always leading with love and guiding with an example that inspired righteousness. As he marched to make salt or fasted and nearly starved himself as a call for peace during the Indian civil war, he enlightened more people closer to the idea that we are all equal forms of life no matter their faith. He acted in love, he guided toward truth. Gandhi used creativity in simple demonstrations to find the alternate way.
Non-violence is a pure force causing the aggressor or oppressor to see their own fault and realize the insanity of their actions. When you respond to violence or hatred, or malice of any form with something on the path towards love, it ends the cycle, it gives the opposition nothing to retaliate to, rendering them to see the senselessness and ultimately change their actions. Gandhi took the blows literally and physically until people in power became aware of the insanity of their choices and seized their anger. He inspired millions to do the same expanding their capability of love. Absorbing the wrongs of violence and reacting in a peaceful manner somehow finds a way to enlighten the opposition to see that the only sensible way forward for everyone is to move through the world toward love.
Jesus, whether you accept the beliefs of Christian religions or not, was a human that lived on earth and his message was love. He teaches us we can love each other, treat each other equally and find harmony here on earth. This was a remarkable sort of idea over 2,000 years ago. We’re talking about a time when stoning people was normal and when shoe technology was just plain god-awful. Treating people with compassion and respect and empathy are fundamental ways to create environments that foster love and there’s nothing magical to debate about that. The miracles, the myths, the decision-maker at the gates of heaven… to me this clouds the thing that was most important and revolutionary, his example of love. It seems the big idea of love gets lost in all the other rituals and creeds. Yet in good spirit, it’s fun to think that if by some supernatural law-defying power, Jesus really is a son of god, out there floating like an ethereal angel somewhere in the cosmos, waiting for me at the gates just as the golden renaissance frescos portray… and having the ability to read my mind and my books, I know he’ll forgive me for having rational doubts and reasonable questions, because that’s the kind of loving dude he probably was.
These men were great because they used love as their superpower. If they used power and oppression, their greatness would never have happened. Flip it this way, what if Jesus would have lashed out and started beating people with his cross as he marched toward his death? What if he was smacking whores around for being terrible people? What if Gandhi would have thrashed people with sticks and thrown bricks at Pakistanis? What if MLK was rallying people to riot and fight white people and burn cities? Would any of these people be storied heroes and icons of humanity if they were promoting violence? It’s the most obvious rhetorical question of all time. Hard no.
In 2022, it is rather insane to me that war is even a thought as a means of achieving power and success. The Russian and Ukrainian conflict seems psychotic from both angles. It makes you wonder, “How the hell can we still be acting like this?” It reveals the juvenile nature of our species. That we’re still savage and unruly children in terms of our evolution. Knowing the strengths of love and peace, the real way forward is always built upon truce, trust and truth. It is always through the path of love that we evolve and improve.
The way I see it, uncovering love is like an art and a science. It’s certainly not easy life’s work. In every situation, we can conjure up an idea for a behavior or an action, we can act, test it in the experiment and analyze the results. We keep testing and experimenting with virtues until we move closer and closer to love, until we learn the methods that work. These master artists of love discovered the ways, they did groundbreaking work, and they proved what was possible. Now, it’s up to all of us to continue the way.
Through a process of genuine integrity, honesty, and peace we find the truth and what’s right. These great scientists of love, the trailblazers, geniuses, master artists, whatever you prefer to call them — are a famous few who were aware of the two paths and believed love was the only right way to go. They figured out the right actions in the right moments, setting an example for us to follow and inch humanity closer toward love.
They took leaps. Leaps that changed how we love. They opened people’s minds and made them realize, “oh, so this love thing actually works… How about that?!” Cue imaginary clips of people throughout history giving recorded video clips: An ancient man holding stones, “You’re telling me you don’t have to resort to beating people over the skull?” A Viking, “Soo when I killed like 450 people the other day… that’s not a good thing?” Another ancient fool, “So you’re saying I shouldn’t kill a man because I love his wife…” Wet bearded Idiots on a boat, “Maybe we should stop hunting whales…” An emperor, “we can build stuff without slaves?”
When we do get there, love does and will continue to seem obvious in retrospect.
Because we have had the gift of great examples of love operating in the world, we see and start to understand that liberating people is a positive sum gain for all of us.
They are proof that love works., offering us an invitation to continue mastering the craft of love.
Friendly Reminder: Love as human behavior is something we’re evolving to understand and a growing capacity to care for people beyond ourselves. The feeling of love (romance) is a biological reaction from our brains to encourage the reproduction and replication of our species… you’d be wiser if you were aware of the difference, you horny ape.