Love Is All That We Are And All That Matters

It doesn’t get easier, going to that place where it all began ten years ago. Each year we return to make sure he is okay. He is 18 now, and he is doing well.

We ravaged his tiny body so many years ago. Poison coursed through him year after year, killing the beast that tried to steal him from this life.

It changed him, it changed us. It all falls away when you face death. It comes for all of us eventually, and we all try to run from it.

When you stand before it, it changes you. The things you thought were so important no longer exist.

The car you wanted, the career, the fame, the designer handbags, the jewelry, the vacations—you think you need all of that. You live your whole life pursuing it, and some of us even attain it all. But all of us still have to face that thing we all fear. None of us are going to get out of here alive.

I stood in a room yesterday as my son was greeted by some of the people who had helped to save his life. One woman walked in. She had been the one who had delivered the medicine into his spine so many times. She always did it with love pouring out of her. Always calm, always soothing, and always with compassion. 

My boy had given everyone their hugs, but when she walked in, the world stopped. 

There was a silence in that moment when they locked eyes. They wrapped their arms around one another, and they melted into one being. Two souls embracing, two humans wrapped in love for one another. No words passed between them—there were no words needed. Their souls shone in that moment. The veil had lifted. Love radiated from them, and you could feel it. 

Those are the moments that matter, the moments that are more real than anything in this universe.

We walked through those hospital hallways like we do every year. We see it with our hearts, not our eyes.

I watched a young mother hold her little boy’s hand and laugh with him. His little bald head, his feeding tube. He held his stuffy in one hand and his mother’s hand in the other. I knew her pain in that moment. I could see it in her brave smile. She wasn’t doing it for anyone but her little boy. Inside, her heart was breaking, and her fear was right there clutching at her chest, but she was smiling for him. So he could be brave enough to keep fighting, so he could be comforted. 

Sometimes, I want to scream at the world. People running around like maniacs, sacrificing everything to make a buck, to support a political party, to be right, to be superior in some way. Just stop it!

All we are, all that we will ever be at our core is LOVE. It is all that matters. Hold onto it if you have it. Hold onto it like it’s the last day, the last minute, the last second of your existence. If you come across people who radiate it, who live authentically, without labels, without pretense, without hate in their hearts…hold those people close. Take them into your life and love them with everything you have. Let the rest fall away.

The people in your life who are with you, the ones who see your soul and the ones that allow you to see theirs—those are the ones who get to live in your heart forever. Just love them and never be afraid to show it. Live in that and stop worshipping all that other garbage.

Just love one another…just LOVE.