Transcript
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another daily gym. It is Monday, January 15th, 2024. It is Martin Luther King Junior Day. Today I am recording from a hotel on my way to Chicago. The snow was hitting hard, the temperatures are very cold. Even truck drivers were going 20 MPH. So I said, let me pull off and, and get a hotel today. What I want to talk about is Martin Luther King. And.
What if we moved from a goal of peace to a goal of love?
And so I've been thinking about this on the drive and the last couple of days I went to a Mandela exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, and learn more about Mandela. I learned more about him in the past month when I went out to see Robben Island in Cape Town. And uh there was also a couple plays about Martin Luther King at the museum, also the original bus of Rosa Parks um where she sat when she was first arrested for protesting her giving up her seat and where she sat after the boycott was lifted because the Supreme Court ruled that the buses could get integrated.
So when I talk about from peace to love, what do I really mean?
One thing that stuck out, stuck out for me with regards to MLK in Mandela was that they didn't seem to talk too much about wanting peace. Yet they often get labeled as peace activists or they win the Nobel Peace Prize. Um They get kind of categorized as people that were striving for peace. I would say no, some may disagree. But that's, I think in general, a lot of people have seen them as people as proponents for peace. Now, when I look at their words and listen to testimonials from different people, it seems to me that they talk much more about love and wanting love. So, Mo for example, has a book called Strength to Love. He gave a speech called Loving Your Enemies. Um His ultimate goal I believe was the beloved community even today watching the national football league playoffs. Um in honor of Martin Luther King, they are working with his, I think grandson's organization, the, the King Center um with a campaign called Be Love and it's on the back of all the helmets. And so there's a strong emphasis on love even with Mandela. Um there was a woman named Zelda La Grange. And she had a small little description at uh the Mandela exhibit where she was talking about how he hired her, a white young inexperienced, Afrikaans speaking, somewhat racist person to work in his cabinet. And she learned many different ways to think and believe. But importantly, she learned how to love. And so this word comes up a lot in these conversations and I've reflected on it a lot in my life over the last couple of years. And what I seem to think is that.
A lot of times when we want peace, I think a lot of us use the word peace as in this almost indifferent, kind of steady, uh predictable, stable existence, where we're not feeling too much, we're not too excited, we're not too sad, you know, especially getting rid of kind of the quote unquote negative emotions. We don't have the sadness, we don't have the anger, we don't have the fear. We don't have a lot of this anxiety that drives us nuts. And so we just don't feel that it's just kind of slow and steady, like a nice low rolling wave.
And I think when we go for that as the goal, then we actually sometimes try to get rid of the things that make us feel. We try to either get rid of the thing that's making me feel sad or the thing that's making me feel angry, or we try to get rid of that feeling. We are fighting against this. And I think when we go for love, we're actually going for these feelings. We're going for the feeling of joy and happiness and togetherness and gratitude, and also willing to go through the anger and the frustration and the sadness that comes along with it. So when we think about Martin Luther King, do we think of him as a very peaceful kind of slow ruling? I don't, I think of him as frankly a man that expressed a lot of anger and a lot of excitement and a lot of optimism and a lot of hope, but also a lot of frustration and, and deep feelings throughout these situations, Mandela as well. I don't think of him as one that's just kind of slow and steady and everything is predictable and no highs and no lows I think of lots of highs, lots of lows pushing the boundaries. Really fighting not for peace, not for this kind of, apathetic coexistence, but really fighting for a vibrant uh aliveness for fighting for a love that, that transcends and that unites.
And I think this is one thing that sometimes we often overlook when it comes to MLK or when it comes to Mandela or when it comes to some of these leaders that have pushed really hard for this, that I've been asking myself, how come we don't have more leaders that are fighting for love that are really fighting really hard for this. And maybe because so many of our leaders that kind of want war to end are actually fighting for peace. Not realizing the people who want peace often don't want to fight. Like my understanding of the phrase pacifist is someone who doesn't like fighting, doesn't like the, the back and forth, the arguing and the, the, the conflict and the confrontation. But isn't that part of loving each other, loving another human being, loving another community. Um basically just two human beings or two groups trying to come together and work together and, and unite together. It involves conflict, conflict and beliefs, conflict and behaviors, conflict and, and feelings. And how do we not necessarily try to get rid of the conflict? Which I think a lot of people define peace as the absence of conflict. But how do we try to unite through conflict? How do we use conflict instead of fighting for peace and trying to get rid of the things that are disturbing our peace? What if we could fight for love? So we fight for the things that are getting in the way of our love, the things that are stopping us from loving. And so earlier, when I looked at the Be Love campaign for the Martin Luther King Center, it talked about that and how are we fighting kind of against the things that are getting in the way of love? That love is the goal and these are the obstacles preventing us from doing it.
So that's what I'm reflecting on today. I can talk much more about this and I would love to. So it may come up as a theme here or in some other conversations or writings that I do. But for me just thinking more deeply on what does it look like if we are fighting not for peace, but instead fighting for love. All right, I hope you all appreciated this and even if it pissed you off, I think that's ok as well because again, feel I want people to feel, I don't want to go into this kind of numb piece. Now again, maybe you have a different definition of peace, but I'm curious to hear what your definition of peace is. So um yes. So if you'd like to start the conversation during the conversation. I'd love to have you and, uh, look forward to talking to you all soon.
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