I came to the conclusion about three years ago that people want two things in life: 1) everyone wants to belong (to be loved, accepted and have a place) and 2) that everyone wants to be heard (implying that also means they have a voice). Take one of these two ingredients away from anyone and they will turn into someone you barely recognize.
My person gifted me a slotted, black felt board with white plastic letters for Christmas. I use it to put messages in my living room. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day I put “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
My son, who is 11 years old, said he didn’t understand. So, I took him into the bathroom and turned the lights off. With no windows, it was pitch-black.
I asked him if he could add more darkness to the room to make it lighter. He said, “no.” I then asked him how he could add light in the room. He said the only way was to turn on the light. So we did that.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkess; only light can do that.”
I then asked him what he would do if he were hit by another person. He said, “I’d probably hit that person back.” I said, “Maybe rightfully so. But, when you hit that person back, does it escalate the situation or soften it?” He said, “We’d probably hit each other more.”
Then I asked him, “What would happen if you just walked away? Would that put the fire out?” He said, “Probably, I don’t know.”
I told him that he does know. “What Martin Luther King Jr. was saying is that the darkness is the hate. And you can’t conquer the darkness with hate. You can only fight the darkness/hate with light or love.”
I asked him if he knew what love is. I asked him if love was only that ooey gooey feeling you get when you’re with someone you like. He’s 11, so he didn’t answer me; instead he grabbed his ankles and made a joke.
I don’t want my kids to be disillusioned. I don’t want them to grow up believing that love is only something we can give to those who give us that feeling and those we are related to, but that love is something that we can give to everything and everyone regardless of how we feel.
While love can be identified as a feeling, we also need to understand that we can love without feeling anything at all. I believe that sometimes, especially when we don’t feel accepted or heard, we forget that love is patient, kind, that it holds no record of wrong and that it is not self-seeking.
And that, that kind of love, more than anything else in the world, is what drives out hate because when we are patient and kind, when we are not self-seeking and when we hold no record of wrongs, we are a place, a person, who can accept others and give them a place to be heard.
There is so much hate, disguised as love, being thrown around that we may completely lose sight of what love is. I don’t know how to fix it. I know that I can’t fix any of this today or tomorrow or next week.
But I do hope that by sitting in the pitch-black bathroom with my 11-year old son that I will plant a seed within him that will grow into something that resembles kindness, patience, selflessness and holds no record of wrongs. I hope that he, like his sisters, will come to understand that there are many, many people who will share their varying viewpoints throughout their lifetime. I hope that they will be the type of people who can say, “I can see you’re angry and in need of a safe place. Sit. Let’s talk about it.”
