By Pailey Gordon
You just got home from a long day at work and want to relax for the night. You turn on your television and watch the nightly news. The first thing you see is breaking news about a horrible crime where one has decided to inflict pain on others. Whether it happened in a different country or in your own, you feel sympathy for those people. Overflowing emotions fill your heart and your deepest condolences are sent to them. Recently there was a mass shooting in New Zealand; massive amounts of support and love went to them during this tragic time. This incident, to me, is an example of how love can overpower any kind of hate no matter how powerful that hate may seem and how we can come together as one.
Love really is a powerful thing, no matter if it is love for your family, love for nature, love for even the smallest of things, like how your coffee smells in the morning or how green the grass looks after a long winter. Love has this way of making us feel like we can achieve anything if we have what we love. It makes you feel invincible.
Think of someone you love. It can be your mother, child, significant other, best friend, anyone. You have to go on a long journey with them; it’s going to be hard but it will be okay because they are with you, right? If you were to go by yourself, would you have the same amount of confidence? Probably not because two is better than one, I personally think most of us can agree with that.
Now, just imagine a world without love. What do you think that would look like? Would we live in complete mental darkness our entire lives? Would our land be destroyed by weapons of mass destruction? Would humans go extinct? Can the human race even survive without love? I feel like as a human race, we thrive off the feeling of loving and being loved and could not survive without a little bit of love.
There is no such thing as cold, there is only absence of heat. That is a fundamental principle of thermodynamics. When you feel something that has no heat we call it cold, but it isn’t cold, it just doesn’t have heat. So does that apply with love? Is there no such thing as hate, it’s only the absence of love? Maybe we call it hate, but in reality it is really just lack of love. If there is no such thing as hate, wouldn’t it make it easy for love to overpower it?
If we show a little more love and open ourselves up I think we can destroy any kind of this so-called hatred. It will take a worldwide effort but I believe in every single person on this planet. There is not one person who is incapable of feeling love. Every single person will have to open up to trusting people, learn new things, and show other people how love can be so good for the soul. Once we do this it will make the world a better place.
So I ask one thing of you after reading this article, take time today to show your love and kindness to anyone. The more we display love and kindness the more it will spread. Don’t be afraid to do a random act of kindness. Don’t be afraid to show you love someone. Don’t be afraid to try and make the world a better place.
Pailey Gordon is a student at Fillmore Central High School. She is one of eight area students participating in the Journal Writing Project, now in its 20th year.