Watering the Garden

 

Photo from: Phillymag.com

    What is love? Is it staring at a person who you would want to spend the rest of your life with, or is it buying a homeless person food to ensure that they are eating? Is it walking outside with an outfit that you finally feel confident in, or is it donating your old clothes to charity? Is love something that we see, feel, or hear? Is it the sound of your favorite song blasting through the speakers with your windows down, or is it giving someone you favorite book to allow them the same experience you felt when you first read it? What is love? Because I honestly feel as though our world does not contain enough of it today. I feel as though all the love we have given this word has been tampered by hate, racism, brutality, and criticism. When you tell someone that you love them, is it because you actually do or has it been an automatic response you use to fill the silence. We see influencers preaching about love, artists writing songs about love, poets creating literature about it, but why does it feel as though our world does not contain love? Why does it feel as though all we see are moments of people fighting to be loved but not receiving it? I have learned that if you water a plant too much or too little, it dies. Perhaps this is what has happened to our world. We don't understand that a plant that does not require an abundance of water will drown under its presence, but at the same time we dehydrate it from the nutrients it needs to survive. Where can we find the balance? How do we give just enough love without hate to save our planet? You tear down a wall that has only heard the arguments that have been held within it, and you see the worn out wood that dies from that result. You look at the shoes you were too careless to take care of fall apart. You can see the effect of not giving love all around you, yet people still don't see what it is doing to our Earth and ourselves. People are too afraid to trust anybody else because they have been hurt too much in the past. Our world has been damaged. People are scared to live in it. They see people leaving because they have been underwatered. We have depended on the rain to water our gardens, but what if this world holds a drought? We cannot only depend on Mother Earth to give us love when we haven't shown he that we are capable of it. We need to learn to water our own gardens, so we can live freely. I ask you again, what is love, and this time I want you to imagine your favorite color. Why do you love it? Does it remind you of someone, or does it bring you joy. I want you to imagine this world as your favorite color. Pick out your favorite parts and why you love being here. Now when you see what you don't love, change it. Make a difference in this world, so you can say that you love it. One person cannot water an entire garden built for billions of people, but multiple people can. Even if you watering comes in the form of saying hello to the boy who has been bullied his entire life, you are making a difference. It is you who must learn to water your own garden, and if everyone does this, we will start to see a world filled with love rather than hate.