“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King Jr. 

Dad was a United Church minister who preached the merits of the bible throughout his working career. He developed dementia in his later years but, during some lucid episodes, proclaimed that we must put the bible and its stories aside and just believe in God. Even though he used the word God, I understood it as believing in a higher power, the maestro of the universe’s orchestra. I liked this thinking and appreciated the removal of the stories that tried to explain what god was trying to say based on a denomination’s rules, wording, and interpretations.

Our existence in physical form is easy to understand. Per Einstein, energy cannot be created or destroyed; therefore, it is in a continual state of collapse and reformation. Everything we see, including ourselves, must be a reformation of this energy.

Our existence in a spiritual form is a little harder to grasp. The more I learn, the more I believe we are an emanation of a higher power whose purpose is to be love. During my brother’s eulogy to my father, he decided the best way to describe Dad was to say he was love. Not a bad handle to be given or a goal to be achieved. Simply, your actions or words can go in one of two directions. You can heal, or you can hurt. This goes for outwardly and inwardly. Choose wisely, and you will move toward living in a world of love. Choose unwisely, and you will move towards living in a world of hate.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on watching my choice of heal or hurt. Hurt thoughts and actions can appear in many forms, such as attack, annoyance, anger, fear, revenge, and hate. None of these make me or, if unleashed, the recipient’s lives any brighter. Heal thoughts and actions can also appear in many forms, such as compassion, sympathy, kindness, patience, and love. Heal thoughts leave me and the recipient feeling better about ourselves and the world.

As an adult, it takes work to remove the filters that have made me believe that hurt should ever be an option over heal. I have witnessed how powerful the shift can be, and in retirement, I will continue to pursue it entirely as a way of life. We often hear about the importance of children feeling loved. We should also emphasize the importance of children and adults, for that matter, knowing that they are love and what they say or do will mirror what they hear and experience. Let’s work at making love the only option and see if the butterfly effect will catch on.