It's the love in our hearts that makes this stuff hurt
And the hope.
I had a very brief conversation with a colleague about the state of the world, in indirect ways. It started when I wryly said “it’s a beautiful world”. His response told me we were both thinking about the news of the day, not only the precipice of war, but even the airplane crash in Iran was on our minds.
We pay attention when planes crash. We weep inside when planes crash.
But there’s a beautiful lake outside my window, and the skies are blue. I’m comfortable in a cozy house.
One of our colleagues just had a new baby. Nothing like a picture of a new baby to make you feel like all the world is new.
And I got to thinking: The thing about this war, and plane crashes, and people not having health care, and future generations dealing with an insane amount of extreme climate events, is that it all hurts precisely because there’s love in our hearts. The thing that makes me look at a colleague‘s new baby and feel joy, is the same thing makes me angry when I hear about someone else’s baby not getting the medical treatment it needs, and it’s the same thing as the sadness I feel when I hear about someone bombing someone somewhere. We who feel pain over the news of the day have placed part of our hearts — part of our love, part of our hope — in the future wellbeing of our fellow human beings.
All of them. The poor ones, the foreign ones, the unfortunate and rejected ones. I think we even feel sad in the face of the cold-hearted ones — because we recognize, they aren’t living their highest life, if they have cut themselves off by not feeling anything for the whole of humanity.
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Thank you. 
