Love These More: St. Valentine's Day Edition

Since today is Valentine's Day, also known as February 14th, I decided to write a love themed blog post.  Love is on my mind a lot; not really the romantic, eros, kind of love, more of the humanity, agape kind of love. I just feel like there's not enough love in this world.  I've always felt this way.  When I was in kindergarten, we had a school wide project/contest in which we answered a question.  The question was something like: what would you do to help the world with all it's problems?  Pretty heavy question for elementary students, but I ended up winning the contest with my answer.  I said I would sing the world a song that'd end all hunger, pain, and hate so everyone could live a life full of love and void of need.  I know we are naturally selfish creatures and I know that we, at least, in the US often adopt this mentality of 'I have to do whatever I can to get ahead in life, because I have to look out for myself', but I don't agree with this attitude.  If everyone 'looks out' for others, for everyone else, then we won't have to be so consumed by ourselves because someone else is caring for us.  This is not to say we shouldn't love ourselves, we just shouldn't make it our number one priority.  In my idealist mind, this makes sense, but it breaks my heart daily that it's not a reality.

Here's a short list of nouns people should love more.  Perhaps if we're preoccupied with loving these things more than ourselves then we'll find true fulfillment.

1) People.  Hopefully you saw this one coming.  People are super hard to love; I often find myself forcing myself to love people (and to show that love) despite how often I'm hurt by people (which is on a daily basis more times than not).  But every person is built to love and to be loved; when this is happening, when love is flowing in and out of a person, they can function like a well maintained violin, (acoustically) perfectly.

2) Animals.  This is not just because I'm a vegetarian.  Mistreatment of animals really upsets me, the same amount as mistreatment of people does.  I don't believe that people and animals were created equal, but I do believe that animals were put in the care of humans.  All animals, all creatures, deserve respect, not because they've done anything to earn it, but because they exist.  And because they're cute (even goats).

3) Art.  Working in a public school, I face a lot of degradation on a daily basis about art.  My job is to  help bring the inner artist out in each child I teach.  I had a kid (first grade boy) yesterday tell me he doesn't like singing, I was bummed for a second and then thought, there are many other art mediums out there for him.  The USA is in this big push for global competitiveness with the World in science and math.  It's like they want every current student to grow up and be a mathematician and/or scientist.  In this effort to emphasize these fields, The Arts have not just been de-emphasized, they've been marginalized and called unnecessary.  Art  is essential to being human, no society, past-present-future, has ever existed without art.  Love Art more, it allows everyone to be successful in some capacity.  You may not become a professional artist, but art isn't about the money it's about humanity.

4) Earth. It's our home, we treat it pretty crappily.  Let's treat it with respect.

Love these things better and be better.