L is for the way...

Jimi Hendrix once said, "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Genius!

He, in a single sentence, managed to sum up my struggles with the state of the world we live in. Before moving to Korea, I would spend many moments reflecting on why people focused on the negatives in our society, rather than embracing the positives. I would stumble across pages and pages of past journal entries where my teenage self wondered why people found it so difficult to see the beauty in our world.

I realize now that it's so much easier to focus on the negative, because we're always surrounded by it. There's no doubt that the media broadcasts the horrible things happening in our world in much greater and frequent detail, than the moments that present hope.

Think about it -- how often have you turned on the TV or radio, only to listen to news about murders, disasters, robberies and death? How often have you stumbled upon or clicked on stories over the Internet that depict the shallowness and vanity of our society? There's so many websites and blogs that are simply dedicated to highlighting all that's wrong with our world.

It makes it pretty easy to focus on the negatives when those stories and moments become ingrained in our subconscious, huh?

The experience I described in my previous post got me thinking about hope. The naysayers and those counting down to doomsday have megaphones attached to their thoughts. And we (even if it's unintentionally), give them the attention they crave.

Feeling quite alone in my manner of thinking, I started searching the Internet, hoping someone out there shared my (and Jimi's) beliefs.

In my desperate attempt to find at least one proper blog dedicated to preserving hope for humanity, I came across this website. Love Gives Me Hope is a site dedicated to the invisible moments -- the moments you only think about once they've passed, before you realize how precious they were. These are the moments when you say to yourself, "All hope is not lost."

There's people out there who believe in the power of paying it forward. They don't broadcast their experiences and doings over megaphones and tweets. They simply love and treasure life. They are the optimists in our world who do simple gestures without expecting anything in return.

They show their love through acts of kindness to strangers; through love for the environment and our planet; through simple value for the gift of life.

Love can move mountains! I believe this from the bottom of my heart. Even when I find myself feeling defeated and jaded from life's battles, I'm always picked up when I experience or hear about acts of kindness and love... in any form.

We all encounter them more often than we think. Yet somehow, simply because of the way our world's programmed, we can't help but overshadow these precious moments with those of pain and negativity.

Yes, there's a lot of despair and suffering in the world. And yes, we might be spiraling towards a global disaster that might be beyond our control. However, if we spend less time thinking about all that's happening past our reach, and use more energy trying to make a beautiful difference within our radius, we might be pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

Just some thoughts for the evening. Thanks, Jimi! Thanks, dear readers!

xo
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