it is love.
If there is one force more important and that we need the most...
it is love.
If we can find it so easy to hate in this world, then we can equally find it easy to let go...
and love.
Our world has been home to some amazing people. For me, those people have, for the most part, been involved in the arts; but have made important contributions to lives and to entertainment.
The important factor to take into consideration to becoming successful is to LOVE the thing that you are creating. This is so vital because an audience, a customer, if they don't feel that love, will not want to receive your creation. Love is a central component towards success.
LOVE + IMAGINATION X PASSION = SUCCESS
There is a false idea across the Western world that in order to succeed you need to be nasty, greedy, bullish or violent. Well, just look at how that attitude has shaped Western politics and foreign policy. We are in a new decade and now is the time to change our way of thinking. Hating foreigners to you, strangers to you, is not working. Fearing something that you don't understand is not working. Try learning to understand instead; try loving first and see how far it gets you. Our egos do not need the fuel of hatred and anger.
Think back to when you were a child and how it felt when you found out someone didn't like you. Now you are an adult and it has been drummed into us to look at people with suspicion first. Both those emotions make you feel horrible, so why choose that.
If you want to choose love then you must remember that you have that choice. Your emotions are yours and yours alone. No-one has made you feel a certain way, you have made a choice to feel that way. You can choose something other than fear, hate, anger, frustration. You can choose forgiveness and love and be all the stronger for it.
In the story of The Great Dictator a small town barber is brutalised by fascist soldiers because his face does not fit. He fights back and suffers further brutality.
Toward the end of the story he is mistaken for the vile, childish and obnoxious dictator and is ushered on stage, greeted by an audience of thousands waiting with bated breath to hear his words. Yet what the dictator speaks are not words of war and hate, or division and fear; instead the little barber delivers a sermon of love.
'In the 17th Chapter of St. Like it is written: "The Kingdom of God is within man" - not in one man nor a group of men, but in all men!'
Love, he is saying, is inside all of us and always has been. We have the power should we choose to see it, reach for it, and believe it.
He also says, 'The misery that has come upon is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.'
How many leaders throughout our world can you see that this applies to?
If we can set aside what we have chosen to seperate us, we can move on as a society and as inhabitants of the planet Earth. We chose to see black and white as different, just as we chose to call darkness night and light day. We chose to be ruled by time and we chose to be ruled by money, these are not ideas born from the universe. So it stands to reason that we can choose to think of love when making decisions.
I understand that there are threats in the world, primarily we are our own worst enemy; but we have the power and the understanding to choose our actions and reactions. We need to understand that we have control over our emotions; we need to accept that our reactions are because of us, not because of someone or something else.
I choose a better world; a successful world built on an understanding of love and freedom.
As Ben Kenobi once said, "You can't win, but there are alternatives to losing."
Zac Thraves is a writer, performer, and mindfulness practitioner, based in Kent, UK.
