What if love will save the world?

“What if I told you that you didn’t have to save the world, only love it?”

Willow Defebaugh, editor-in-chief for ATMOS magazine (my favorite magazine ever), you pose this question to the world and I love you for it. 

Your words curl into fingers that reach down into my heart, gently prying it out of the body's weighted nature and setting it on my lap. 

“What if love will save the world?”

I look at my heart, bleeding and beautiful and aching. That desperate piece of myself right there thumping, pushing and pulling the life force that sustains me– telling me love and be loved. Love and be loved.

What if love will save the world? 

What if we all pulled our hearts out from our chests, sat with it for a while, and had a conversation? What would happen if we asked ourselves if we are living with love– for our fellow humans, for the trees and oceans and giraffes and moss and sweet potatoes growing under the dirt out back? Are we? Are we leading with love?

An ethic of love changes the policies we write, the ways we seek resolution. With a love ethic we give a tender hug to those who have hurt us. We see their humanity, know their body and mind and heart are also vessels of this same great force of love.

To love and be loved.

What if each of us doled out love like candy come Halloween? Giving and giving with no sense of scarcity?

The boy I saw outside the supermarket in Cambodia wouldn’t have been left begging by the door, putting his hand to his mouth, gesturing “Please, I’m hungry.” The older boys wouldn’t have stopped to kick him, laughing at this tiny begging boy. 

If we all loved the world truly, deeply, and widely we would embrace one another. Lift each other up from poverty, depression, isolation, and sickness.

A love ethic means we would better care for our planet too. If we loved the trees and birds and rivers, treated them like our aunties, we would sit with them, place our hands on bark, dip our toes in the stream, and say, I am with you.

What if we all pulled out our hearts, sharing them, letting them float downstream for a while. What if we lent our love so wholeheartedly that enough hearts and energy of love buzzed all around us, keeping everyone warm and held?

I'm imagining thousands of people walking the streets of some big city, energetic hearts pulsating in the air, along the concrete, resting on the branches of trees and a gentle air of togetherness. What would be the power of all our love combined?

When love will save the world it will stop the deforestation I’ve seen in south Thailand where palm plantations root out native trees and greenery is demolished for new profit-driven developments.

Love will clear the sludge of smog in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Love will mean buying less plastic, holding companies accountable and restoring beahces like those of the Phi Phi Island in Thailand -- now littered with bottles, flip-flop carcasses and styrofoam.

Universal, all-in love will ensure that bombings and dioxide sprays will not again decimate cities and populations like what happened in Vietnam.

These past few months, while traveling in Southeast Asia, it seems like my heart really is there in my lap. I feel everything profoundly. All the richness of different cultures and customs. All the pains of poverty, deforestation, and cruel histories.

What if love will save the world?

I'm moved by the love of the people I’ve met.

I’ll never forget the kindest welcome of Farsa – the woman who taught me her local Khmer customs for creating natural body scrubs. She sat in the steam room with me in Kampot, Cambodia, rubbing my back with galangal and p’lai, and with her hands told me-- this heals you.

In Dalat, Vietnam, Tree, and his wife welcomed us for several days, helping us book tours and recomended local markets. On our last night, they invited us to to his birthday dinner in their kitchen, giving us slices of Pandan green cake and offering baby duck eggs– a local delicacy. Their kids played piano, everyone was laughing and I was awed that they wanted us to be a part of their precious family time.

How do we lead with love?

I’ve lived all my life seeing people want to stand out, to be different, better than. I've felt this too many times. Wanting the best grades, the best car, the best new shoes, to post the best Instagram photos, all in hopes that life is worthy. I’m not sure if we can ever authentically embrace a love ethic if we want to be better than.

My travels are showing me that the healthiest souls give. They give their love, share their stories, their dance, their snake wine. 

They give when they have little themselves. Pouring themselves into their guests, their neighbors, their gardens, their rice fields. Letting their hearts run over their community and their land, only asking for love in return. Reciprocity – heart to heart. 

Give and you shall receive they say.

Success cannot exist the way the word has now come to mean. We are all one, we need to bring our hearts together. Love is the answer.

I too think it will be love that saves the world. In a million small ways it already is.