Opportunities to Love

Do we jump at the challenge?

Every single day is a gift because each day offers us countless opportunities to love. That fact alone is enough reason to jump up out of bed each morning in eager anticipation of meeting all those opportunities with all the love we can muster.

Greeting a new day as though it is a profound gift of opportunities is, by far, the best way to get up in the morning. I wish I got up each morning that way. Over the course of a long life I have arisen this way many times but it is by no means a daily thing. I’m still working on that.

I have learned that those opportunities to love come in all sizes. There are those small opportunities that present themselves every time we come into contact with another human. Depending on how many humans we come into contact with on a given day, that can be a lot of opportunities.

Then there are those big opportunities that repeatedly present themselves day after day. I am talking about those opportunities to love our friends, our family, our spouses, our children….

Perhaps the biggest opportunity to love that ever presented itself to me in my life came after I became a father and chose with all my heart to become a full-time stay-at-home mother for five years of my life. My daughter presented that opportunity and during those years she taught me more about love than anyone ever has.

Being a mother to a small child involves nurturing, teaching, protecting, and guiding another human being into their life on this planet. I quickly learned that it is perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity life has to offer. I felt inadequate but I gave it every ounce of attention I could. Never before nor since have I so wholeheartedly dedicated myself to one thing.

And what I learned through that experience is that with all the many roles a parent plays, the very most important thing is to fully and unconditionally love that child. All concepts of parenting are secondary. What is primary above all else is love. Our responsibility is to provide and inundate that child with the purest unconditional love we possibly can — constantly.

There is no teacher greater than a child to teach us unconditional love.

Our challenge as parents is to then turn that unconditional love towards every other human we come into contact with.

Parenting isn’t easy and neither is turning that unconditional love towards every other human we come into contact with. It is a challenge as hard as parenting.

Imagine unconditionally loving every single solitary human you ever come into contact with during the course of every single day!

Seriously, how many days have you spent recently during which you can say you have done that? I am embarrassed to say how few days I can say that about.

Can we unconditionally love every single person we meet as much as our own child?

Our children can be our greatest teachers. And so can our grandchildren. And so can our lovers/spouses/life partners. And friends can be especially challenging teachers. The same goes for co-workers and neighbors.

But what about strangers?

Can we love a total stranger as much as our own children?

At work this afternoon I had showered numerous ‘customers’ with love. That’s what I do. It is empowering but I occasionally need breaks. So I took a little break and went outside to the sidewalk in front of the building. I needed to relax and clear my head but once outside I wondered why I went out there. The temperature was in the mid-nineties (Fahrenheit). It was hot as heck and I could feel my body going into sweat mode.

I walked over to the newspaper vending boxes to stand and just relax. Soon, I noticed an older Mexican man walking down the sidewalk. He was carrying some sort of small duffle bag on his back and he was a little stooped over.

He saw me and his eyes lit up and he smiled. He immediately walked over to me. Pulling back the left sleeve of his jacket (why the gosh darn heck was he wearing a jacket in this gosh darn heat?) and then the long sleeve of his shirt, he pointed at his empty left wrist, indicating that he was not wearing a watch. Tapping his finger on his naked wrist he then asked in Spanish, “Que hora est?”

I am one of those disgusting white American males who never bothered to learn Spanish but I knew that he was asking me if I knew what time it was.

What makes me truly disgusting is that I spent around eight years of my youth living just a stone’s throw from the Rio Grande. I lived in an American city on the north side of the Rio Grande and over sixty percent of the population of that American city was Mexican, many of whom did not speak American. During that time I had two Mexican girlfriends and I still did not learn how to speak Spanish. How disgusting of me!

There are countless articles on the internet that say that the best way to keep your noggin sharp and increase your intelligence and productivity is to learn a foreign language (especially when you’re older). Well, call me an ignorant, stupid bastard! At my age the only language I know is American.

Luckily, I know at least a few phrases in Spanish and I knew that this fellow on the sidewalks was asking me what time it was.

I immediately showed him my naked left wrist. I have not worn a watch since the spring of 1980. I have an aversion to clocks and I will not wear one anywhere near my body. But I had recently looked at the office clock on the wall inside. My best guess was that it was approximately twenty-one or twenty-four minutes past five o’clock.

Looking at the man and noticing the sweat pouring down his face, I tried to tell him approximately what time it was but the only word I could come up with was, Cinco. I could not come up with the words to tell him that it was approximately twenty-one or twenty-four minutes past Cinco.

I was rather embarrassed. I felt stupid. I felt unworthy. I felt incapable of responding to the opportunity to spread love that was suddenly being presented to me.

Damn, why was I so reluctant to learn Spanish?

I really wanted to help this man by telling him the time.

For some reason, I suddenly looked over to one of the newspaper vending machines on the sidewalk. I motioned for the man to follow me as I walked over to the newspaper box. The top of the box was covered with a layer of dirt and dust and sand. With my finger, I drew a circle in that layer of grime. Then, from the center of that circle I drew two lines; one a short one and one a slightly longer one. The two lines were like the short and long hands of a clock.

The Mexican man immediately realized that I was drawing a clock that showed it was approximately somewhere between twenty-one after five o’clock and twenty-four after five o’clock. His eyes lit up and he grabbed my right hand and shook it vigorously, saying, “Gracias, gracias, gracias!” He then let go of my hand and continued on down the sidewalk.

I thought about back when I was a mother. Teaching a tiny child language and how to speak is part of being a parent. Communication can be difficult and drawings and hand gestures can be helpful. A parent cannot get frustrated just because a small child has not yet mastered language and speaking. It takes a lot of patience and perseverance and LOVE. The roles of parent and teacher can become indistinguishable. With my daughter I often felt like I was the child and she was the parent/teacher. The goal is communication and the driving force behind that communication which makes it possible is unconditional love. That is the driving force that breaches all barriers. If the love is there we will find a way to communicate across barriers.

Every single solitary human being that comes into our existence is an opportunity to express unconditional love. No matter their age or cultural background, they are a teacher coming to show us and pull out from us unconditional love. Language, age, culture, race, and intellect are all barriers we present ourselves with. And all barriers are opportunities. We can hold fast to the barriers or we can eagerly accept the opportunities.

Learning new languages is always helpful. But there is one language that always allows communication and that language is unconditional love.

Never shy away from an opportunity to speak that language.

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