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“Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.” ~ Marianne Williamson

I am convinced in the inherent good in others.

And I am also convinced that life is not fair and much of the time most of us are self-serving.

I believe in ideals like justice and truth. I know these ideals don’t always work in the world as we know it.

Yet, I make every effort to love in all my actions. I make every effort to act with care and compassion in my heart.

And I am not alone in that. Recently a dear friend who also endeavors to act with love and compassion has had the injustice of others knock her down. Those in power won. And if it is not about winning and losing—but how the game is played—she played fairly, and lost.

And it matters.

I endeavor to explain what I learned at the age of nine: life is not fair.

My mom told me in high school that most people don’t mean to hurt others but most of us are self-centered.

Sometimes we have to surrender. Yet, though I know saying “never” lacks wisdom, I have to say, never give up.

Never give up the ideals of love and truth and justice.

Sometimes we have to surrender to circumstance. But surrendering to circumstance does not mean giving up on love and hope and truth and justice.

They are always imperfect in reality.

I plant my feet firmly on earth to feel its strength and know though nature can be cruel there is kindness. We have tsunamis, yet every spring flowers bloom, butterflies dance, children run and play out my front door and kittens are born.

We can surrender, yet sometimes the white flag of truce and surrender is accepting life’s ironies and taking the paradox that riddles us into finding how lies can tell truths and how truth sometimes needs to lie to find a way to live where the heart can love.

Love is not easy.

Love gives all in the taking and takes all in the giving.

At the crossroads of this giving and taking is a heart that must be willing to bleed enough to find forgiveness within to settle the scores that surround us.

Asking someone to accept that people lie and bullies win, because they can, is a big request.

But that’s life, isn’t it? People do lie. I do when I have to and I think most of us have lied, some big and some little.

It’s the trade-off of one need over another.

Hopefully in the process no one is hurt. For me, the purpose of a lie is to protect me and often enough someone else.

And we know as I said sometimes a lie can tell a bigger truth than the truth.

Yet we live in a world where bullies can thrive and virtue is shunned because it is not always recognized.

Sometimes the train of injustice will run us over if we don’t move out of its way and find a different crossing. Sometimes we have to surrender. Sometimes the bullies win the moment or get the better of us.

But if we can still hold the values of justice in our heart and be willing to open the heart again, the bullies won’t win. If we can love beyond the hate, if we can stand in our light, amid the shadows and darkness, we won’t lose.

If we survive literally, and not everyone does, I realize, but if we do, we have a chance to take what we learn and grow beyond the misfortune.

We may have to dig in deeper to leap higher. And as the saying goes, the net will appear. It may feel like nails but when we find land we meet a cushion bolstered by a goodness those who hurt and betray can never know.

Don’t give up.

Don’t ever give up on your truth for your truth gives you all you need to brush yourself off and keep going, even when the destination is unclear.

 

 

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Ed: Brianna Bemel