Love

There is a force so powerful.
We think we see it but we really do not.
We think of children as they hug their brothers to sleep,
as they merrily play with their friends.
We think of mothers as they cuddle their babies.
Or lovers as they embrace.

They are manifestations not causes.
Not love in itself.
We feel but not see it.

Love is abstract.
It is seen by the heart and not the eyes.
It comes in many forms.
Yet all of them honor commitment, value selflessness and sacrifice.

In peacetime, it is carved in the heart of young people
as they adore their beloved.
If cyber messages physically flies,
perhaps the swathes of letters will fill the air.
Love is in every emoji, every word and every reply.

Love moves parents to toil in lands afar or in the villages and farmlands.
It is seen in their painstaking labor under the heat of the sun
or in their silent determination, working in office spaces lining the open sky.

It moves the artists to compose beautiful poems.
The writers to write the most touching essays.
And the filmmakers to create films adored by many.

In wartime, love is the reason for being.
It inspires courage to live.
It gives strength to a tired body and overwhelmed mind.
It is a refuge in the sea of misery.
It is what makes little children feel safe in harrowing crises.

Love is what moves people to give when they have nothing.
It is what makes people risk their lives to do what is right.
It is infectious as it causes hearts to bleed
and eyes to well among people in the lands afar.
It is what moves strangers to care for the orphans and tend to the widows.
To welcome into their homes people who speak foreign tongues.

Yet why is it hard to love?
Is it the woundedness of our nature or pride?
What makes us unlove one another?
To hurt each other?

Why is it that we do not learn?
What makes us forget the harrowing stories of war?
What makes us repeat historical mistakes?

What causes us to become enamored by autocracy?
What makes us sell our dignity for power and money?
What enables us to elect the populists who plunder our countries?
Corrupting the institutions of governance, at the expense of the poor.
What makes people of power open the floodgates of disinformation,
to trick and to fool?
What makes the thinking of our hearts captivated by untruths?

What makes us go to war?
What makes us choose selfish dogmas over the lives of our children?
What makes us deaf to the cries of wives losing husbands,
the wail of children losing mothers and the misery of brothers losing sisters?
What is it that cemented our hearts to not see other people’s suffering?

What is it that blinds our conscience?
So much that good people celebrate
and justify violence perpetrated by dictators.

What makes us forget our nature, our original design,
which is made to love?
What is it really that makes us not love?