We’ve all heard it. I’ve written it extensively: Love is the answer (to every question). Choose Love. #LoveAlwaysWins

And now I’m going to break it down:

Love is not the answer.

Of course it is! Love is indeed the answer to every question. But also,

It’s not. Sometimes, love doesn’t answer anything at all. And sometimes, the way “love” is promoted as the answer to questions, leaves much to be desired.

Hear me out.

Love is an exceedingly vast, wide, and all-encompassing concept.

According to many religions and philosophies, love is literally everything. All is a manifestation of love.

So, how can we ask a legitimate question, such as “How do I deal with the bully who is making my life at school a living hell?” and answer with; “Everything” or, “Warm fuzzy feelings.”

That is not an answer.

While love as an answer us a universal truth, it begets more questions. For example, what kind of love?

There are many different types of love. Love appears in a myriad of forms. Sometimes love means softening your heart, and other times it means fortifying your container. Sometimes love means making allowances for other people and empathizing with them. Other times it means harnessing your anger and despair and taking yourself as far away from people as you can get. Sometimes love is indulging in pleasure. Sometimes it’s discipline and restriction. Sometimes it’s a confusing mess of a combination of many seemingly opposite behaviors. If we peer deep inside, the essence is the same, but the delineations vary widely.

Love is both most foreign and most familiar to us.

We are living in a time on Earth when love is not underlying as the acting foundation of government, society, or economics. And even though in the spiritual, universal sense, the eternal and omnipotent power of love may still be within and behind it all, down here in the material world the absence of love in our governing structures has a far-reaching and devastating effect.

Many have veered off the course of love and gone in other directions, in favor of seeming rewards. Illusory rewards include power, success, material wealth, currency, mobility, security, privilege, acceptance by others, image, achievements.

When we are made to build lifestyles ensnared with societal/governmental/economic foundation built on an illusory set of values, it is easy to become lost from love. The snare of collusion is complex. Due to a history of trauma, some people even need to be convinced that love is worthwhile.

Many have become so distant from love that they need clear instructions on how to get back to it. How to recognize it. How to know what it is. How to listen to it. And how, in spite of ceaseless physical and psychic messages emphasizing illusions, to act with love as the main anchor for behavior.

I don’t just mean the blissed-out love feeling when you get out of the spa and realize everything is interconnected. I mean, what is the version of love you draw from when shit hits the fan and death knells toll around you? What is the love that helps you endure when stuff is legitimately fucked up and hard and you have to find forgiveness in a climate when that seems absolutely impossible?

I don’t mean limp, airy fairy ideations of what love could potentially look like in a Bridge-to-Terabithia future. I mean Now. Right now. Working with exactly what you’ve got. How can you take these materials and create more love out of them?

This is what time it is:

We need to be clear. We need to be concrete. We need to get our pens out, draw a map, and execute a plan of action. And if we don’t know, we need to surround ourselves with people and influences that will help us clarify.

If we aren’t sure of the steps, we need the anchor.

Dissipated, disorganized energy can create weakness. It perpetuates disintegrated states within the self, within relationships, and within organizations. Lack of focus can lead to exposed vulnerabilities. In this state, predatory energy can move in and take advantage. We can become a victim to our own mess. Cohesiveness and fortified intention are medicine for us now.

In these times, it is no longer enough to say Love is the Answer. We need to physically, tangibly make love more real.

If we don’t know exactly what our tangible contribution to increasing love is, it’s okay. But it is essential for us to familiarize ourselves with a guidance system that will help us to navigate.

Action Steps:

Familiarize yourself with love. What does love mean to you? How have you experienced love in your life? How do you recognize love? List the different kinds of love you’ve encountered. How does love feel in your body right now? Where do you feel it?
Write down a problem you have encountered in life that has come to resolution (at least partially). What steps and core components helped to lead you towards positive developments?
Who and what keeps you on track? List thoroughly. Keep this list around, and draw frequently from these influences.
At this point in life on planet Earth, what is important? What is important in general; on the global sphere and in the local sphere? What is important to you, as an individual? And how do you plan to uphold that? What are the building block components of that? Write down action steps you can take to support what you hold most dear.

Each person has a different role. Each one of us a different piece of the puzzle. The more we connect with ourselves, our inner guidance system, and build our networks of healthy influences, the stronger we become as a whole.

In Closing

Love is always the answer.

But, and, sometimes Love, as an all-encompassing answer, begs more questions.

Let’s dig deeper.

Let’s find and identify concrete ways we can plant love like seeds into the soil of this Earth. Let’s foster them, protect and nourish them with dedication as they grow. And let’s openly share with one another ways we are making love real. Let’s help others to gain inspiration for their own contributions.

And when we don’t know the tangible answer, let’s show up. When we presence ourselves to the question, we make ourselves available to experience the answer.

We have to build that bridge to Terabithia.

Some of us have no idea how to hammer a nail.

But if we enter the forest in an honest search for that bright land and pick up a hammer, the process will reveal itself to us.

The answer of love will flow through us regardless of obstacle, and we may be amazed at the carpentry skills of something far greater than us.

In the end, we will look at our hands and know,

Love made this.

All of it.

And I was here to experience the miraculous blessing.

I want to hear just how you make love more real. Please comment below. Thank you for contributing your wisdom.