A Call to Share and Spead the Love
by Tammy Stone Takahashi
Dear beautiful humans of the world,
Here’s something every single one of shares: we are living through a time of massive transition. Massive.Can you feel it? It’s hard. It hurts. Everything is shaking and trembling and we feel unsteady, unsure.
But the beauty of times of transition is that they contain the seeds of deep and lasting transformation. The past few years have absolutely shaken us to the core, haven’t they? But they have also inspired us to reflect on the life we have been living until now and the life we want to live on the other side of all this chaos and unrest. Reflecting leads to making decisions that feel good and aligned with who we want to be, and I believe it’s one of our great superpowers as generators of a beautiful future. I can feel this in my bones, along with a deep calling to help water and nurture these seeds of transformation until we are living in the new world of our dreams.
Now is the perfect time to become aware of and cultivate the unique gifts we have to offer the world. The world wants, needs this from us. The future is asking us to come and greet it. Now is the time to contemplate what we already know makes our heart sing – things like kindness, love and compassion – and to discover more of what brings us joy and a sense of purpose. Now is the time to be held in the spirit of these amazing virtues and imagine how we can take the very best of what we have and who we are, and come together. Now is the time to dream! To fall in love with life, again or maybe for the first time, and believe in the immense power we have to make change.
It’s hard to step into our gifts and powers; personally, I can be incredibly shy about acknowledging what it is I have to offer the world. But these times call for boldness, and so here we go. For as long as I can remember, I have had two unique gifts: to express myself with words, and to feel the gratitude and awe that come with being deeply in love with life. Over the years, as I have stumbled in fits and starts on this terrifying, wondrous and sacred journey of existence, I’ve been amazed to see these two gifts come together through my poetry, a writing style I could never have imagined would become my main vehicle for expression. Wonders never cease!
Meditating on the time of upheaval we are now in, I was inspired to write a poem, and my intuition said to me, “Dream big! Dream that you will be able to share this poem with every single person on Earth. Dream that everyone who reads it will feel a spark in their hearts and that this spark will grow and grow into the fires of purification and change. Use your two great superpowers – words and love – to generate a light so vast it will serve as an antidote to all of the darkness.
That’s when the poem that follows was born. It flew onto the page (except for the part where I had to look up how to write love in various languages of the world!). It is my greatest wish that it finds you, wherever you are and however you are feeling, and lifts you, and brings us closer. If it moves you to do so, please share it as far and wide as you can. Let’s build the new world together!
* * *
Love is Always the Answer
by Tammy Stone Takahashi
Maybe we didn’t know
There was a question.
Maybe we can feel it
Just under the surface
As an inner knowing
That something isn’t as it should be,
Or how we imagined it would be
When we were little children
Full of excitement for the future,
When laughter and play
Came so easily,
And everything was going to be okay,
And dreams were more valuable than gold.
Maybe it somehow feels like
Life is less than we expected of it,
Even as we know deep inside
That life has absolutely everything to offer us
And nothing should be getting in the way
Of pure joy and happiness.
But something is getting in the way,
Because we are not joyous,
And we are not happy. Not really.
Not as much as we could be,
Almost bursting out of our skin
With the unbridled excitement of being.
So maybe the questions start coming.
Why is there so much suffering in the world?
Why is there so much flooding, and burning?
Why are we pillaging the Earth
We so depend on for our survival?
Why do we allow for inequality, and inequity?
Why is there so much distance between us,
When together we are so strong,
And we dream of peace and harmony?
Why do we hate, when love feels so much better?
The questions keep coming.
Why am I here?
What is my purpose in life?
What do I have to do to be happy?
Isn’t there another way
Than the way of conflict and war?
Isn’t there another way?
Well, what if there is nothing
We need to do, or to have,
To make things right?
What if we have everything we need
Right here inside of us?
What if we could tap the biggest resource there is,
And what if this resource is infinite?
Love.
Love!
What if we could spread love
As fast as we spread hate?
What if we could choose to do this
At any moment, like this moment
Right here, and right now?
Love. Amour. Ahava. Hubun.
Szerelem. Pi'āra. Ai. Amore.
Liebe. Aroha. Tình yêu. Rạk.
Aşk. Kärlek. Miłość. Agápi.
Uthando. Sevgi. Prēma.
What beautiful sounds
That open up the sky
To reveal all this magic around us,
The sounds of music, of melody,
Of synchrony, of oneness.
I want to say them again and again,
Until love becomes the answer.
Until love becomes the way.
Dashuri. Ljubav. Kærlighed.
Liefde. Armastus. Rakkaus.
Cinta kasih. Sne hea. Sa rang.
Dragoste. Elsker. Sevgi. Hlub.
Love has never left us. It never can.
It is we who have strayed far from love,
Which is always waiting for our return.
What a homecoming it will be.
We can love our way out of fear.
We can love our way out of anger.
We can love our way out of divisiveness.
We love our way whole again.
We can begin by smiling
Until we feel the sun in our hearts
And fire in our bellies.
We can imagine the world we want
Already here, in absolute perfection,
And ourselves, in it, also perfect.
In this world, love always wins.
In this world, our every thought,
Word and action come from love,
And we meet each other
With a deep willingness to listen, and understand,
So that we join together
With a beautiful empathy, and a healed heart.
In this world,
We cannot find the boundary
Between where we end
And everyone else begins,
So that when we love ourselves
We love everyone else,
And when we love everyone else,
We love ourselves.
And this is the revolution.
All this love!
This is the revolution,
Made by, with and for love,
And in love’s name.
And we will rejoice.
And nothing will ever the same.
The best part:
We don’t need to take anything away
To have the world we want.
We don’t need to force
The obstacles to love away.
We just need to add love,
To choose it in every moment,
And everything we don’t want or need
Will simply fall away
Like beautiful autumn leaves.
If we add love, anger will fall away.
By adding love, fear will slip away.
Adding love, division and discord leave us.
Let’s add love, and watch sorrow disappear,
Until only love remains.
Love is not a condition. It is always here.
Love is not a reward. You don’t have to work for it.
Love is not limited. You don’t have to win to get it.
What is love, then?
Love is life’s biggest dream.
Love is our birthright, and our legacy.
Love is expansive without end.
Love cannot be negotiated, or defeated.
Love just is.
Love is you, and I, and everything between.
We can’t deserve, or not deserve love,
Because love is what we are,
And when we know that we are love,
We will not be able to imagine
Hurt, or sorrow, or anger, or pain
In ourselves, or in anyone else.
We choose love, and a new world is born.
We give love, and the world heals.
We receive love, and the world is nourished.
We live love, and we will never want again.
So, will you join me?
Are you ready to sing the song of love
And share it with everyone you know?
Will you ask for everything you need,
And give everything you can?
Will you extend your hand to the world,
To hold and be held,
To comfort and be comforted,
To love and be loved?
Let us say it,
And breathe it,
And feel it,
And dance it,
And live it,
In any language,
In all languages,
Knowing that it is one,
The language of love:
We are love
(And the sun shines brighter)
We are love
(And the world is kinder)
We are love.
(And the hope grows bigger)
I love you so much.
From my heart to yours,
Tammy Stone Takahashi
*Please share this, and make the heart of the world grow bigger.*
Tammy Stone Takahashi (Tammy Stone) is a writer/editor, poet, journeyer, truth-seeker and student of life. Her short stories and poems have been widely published and anthologized and she has worked on several anthologies as co-editor. Her published works include a book of photography, Tag it! Toronto: A City's Imagination Revolution (2009), and the poetry collections Formation: Along the Ganges and Back Again (2015), Land, (2018), and Yoga Healing Love: Poem Blessings for a Peaceful Mind and Happy Heart (2020). When she’s not writing and working on her meditation and yoga practice, Tammy also loves being curled up with a good book, communing with dear friends, learning from trees and making fabric art. Please find more about her and her work on her website here and her healing site, here .
*For submission guidelines, click here.*
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