- “Where is the Love?” *
This is my response to
My name is Leaf, and I have a message to the world: “Where is the Love?” ...here let me break it down.
Perhaps it seems a bit egocentric to say my message applies to everyone, and is a question to a question really even a message? Yet here in lies the answer to so many challenges we seek to face. How do we clean up the planet, how do we find world peace, what should I wear, what do I eat for dinner and what should I do to enjoy life?
In our day to day life we are constantly bombarded with hundreds of questions and choices. Many we answer so frequently they have become subconscious habit, when we are in our own home and have to go pee we don’t find ourselves wondering how we should figure out this solution, we just go to the bathroom. And for many of us when we need to an object to complete a task we do the same thing, again most people choosing to locate, or go directly to a frequented, business establishment and purchase the desired object. Even less will go to multiple stores to find smaller objects to create the larger, and even less will walk outside and create it from tools on hand out of materials on site. When it’s a coffee table and you live in the forest and have an attached wood shop it seems so much more possible to accomplish, than when we live in a small apartment in the city and Wal-Mart is only a short drive away.
I ask “where is the love?” Because I am asking us all to take a deeper look at how we are subconsciously deciding to make decisions. Are we doing it from a space of “what is best for”: the planet, and society, and my family or a space of convenience, price and/profit, perhaps we only know one option? Regardless I’m asking us to take a look at the way we contribute to violence in many actions we take for granted.
Let’s start with cheap manufactured goods made in foreign countries with no child labor laws, no factory health code laws, no environmental impact laws. To take a note from the nonprofit and book Fibershed; “don’t ask why the handmade jeans cost $400 ask why the jeans at a store only cost $40?”. People in the USA get to have cheap manufactured good because we believe a “living wage” means that it’s “normal in their country to have less than what we have”. Who made the clothes you are wearing, not the brand but the actual factory workers. How are they living and enjoying life, don’t they have the right to a healthy and enjoyable life? So I ask where is the love? When you have it you will be willing to see how certain purchases create and contribute to child workers and basically slave labor.
Let’s talk about what we eat? What is the environmental impact of your diet?
Look at this corn:
This corn is growing in beds my friend made from scraps of wood and old pallets. Heirloom blue and red corn. Not Monsanto, not bought at a store, grown and handed down by other farmers and gardeners. Not grown, or sprayed down with toxic pesticides made, in other countries in factories and fields with little or no concern for the health of their employees. When we live from a space of the heart it asks us to ask who are we buying food from, who’s actions are we supporting, are their actions loving the natural environment around them, are their actions loving their employees.
If we want to clean up the environment we have to stop destroying it. From my perspective war destroys environments and local cultures worse than anything else. So it looks like we need Peace before we can even have the space to clean up our trash. It would seem that we need to find economic equality if we want war to stop. To me economic equality starts with respecting our fellow humans and their right to live beneficial and enjoyable lives. If our money is in banks that loan money to weapons manufacturing, and oil derricks destroying fishing villages... I have to ask the question “Where is the love?”
If we don’t ask these questions and continue to support companies with abusive policies of profit then we are actually supporting and promoting the destruction of culture and the environment, we are promoting poverty so we can have those 30$ Walmart jeans. If you think these people deserve it, I have to ask “Where is the love?”
How about the age old “well I worked for this so I deserve it..” Well in the United States if you go back not even very far all the land was procured through the slaughter and systematic destruction of the United States Government....so that was the past and we can’t change it?...sounds pretty selfish to me...”where is the love?” What we have in the “1st world” is only possible because of the poverty of the “3rd world” and the poverty of the lower classes in the US. Well I deserve to make more money because I had the privilege of having an upbringing that gave me the space to go to college...well my father worked built his own company so I deserve to inherit it...well what am I supposed to do just give me money away...all I can say is “Where is the love?”
Im not asking people to feel guilt or shame. Actually I am asking the opposite I am asking people to reach deep and ask how they can connect their community to itself, and then connect communities to communities. I’m not asking for communism... because I’m not asking for some government to come fix everything. I’m asking for people to see there are ways we can create businesses that are owned by employee collectives, we can create lands for farms and gardens that are owned by communities, we can stop purchasing products that depended on foreign communities staying impoverished. We can start feeling that there is a possibility for things such as care, kindness and equality. We can realize that the “away” where our trash goes is someone else’s backyard..or front yard. We can start asking how our product purchases are affecting other communities around the world. We can start asking ourselves “Where is the love?” And then little by little we can start answering that question.
It starts by caring about our own well being, then it extends to our friends and families, and then it extends to their friends and families, and to their friends and families....soon words like neighbors and New Yorkers, and Texans, and Mexicans and Asians all start taking on a new meaning, because somewhere down the line of friends and families we start to realize that that’s what we all are and all have.
“Where is the love?” It’s right here in my heart and in yours. When we come together in appreciation and respect it’s amazing how quickly we can turn a wall into a bridge, and a prison into a playground. When we stop shooting each other we will find the time to clean up our mess.
Wherever you are on the journey, I believe in you, and I know if you read this far then you have what it takes to keep walking, and keep asking yourself how we continue to support ourselves by supporting our communities, our environment, our planet. It’s not about quitting everything at once, it’s about taking small possible steps everyday back toward communities that live in harmony with the earth. Thank you. So much love and respect for you and your friends and families.
