Tolstoy’s thought for today is love. We are supposed to find contentment and joy in loving God and all other people.
“In order to be happy, you need do only one thing: love others.” While this is a gallant mission, here in these United States it’s pretty much a lost cause. Sadly, hate and divisiveness are the two predominant themes when one reads the news and follows politics.
Today, I worked at my desk most of the day, alternating editing articles for the magazine and reading the newspapers. I’m trying to be optimistic, but it’s difficult to believe that our world is going in the right direction and that love will prevail in the end. Unfortunately, hate is on everyone’s lips. If you’re not on the “right” side, then hate is the result.
My friend Howard called tonight and suggested a few articles for me to read, including an opinion piece by David Brooks called “Time to Say Goodbye.” I read it multiple times, trying to soak up the wisdom, history and direction he imparted. It’s a dense piece. I will save it for future reference and reread it again when I feel cynicism seeping back in. But, my one big takeaway is that there’s hope for a better tomorrow.
He says in conclusion: If America could once again restore its secure emotional, material and spiritual base, maybe we could recover a smidgen of our earlier audacity. Oscar Wilde joked that youth is America’s oldest tradition. Maybe it’s time the country matured, and combined youthful energy with the kind of humility and wisdom that Reinhold Niebuhr packed into one of his most famous passages:
”Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”
There’s that word love again. It may be struggling for a foothold in our country at the moment, but hopefully it will endure.