FORCE OF LOVE
Electricity is a force and, like all forces of nature, it’s invisible — no one’s actually seen it! We can only see its effect — just connect different parts of the circuit together in a certain way and see it in action — took me a few school years to learn how!
Now, with my school years well behind me, I wish I had learnt how to connect with the people around me in a positive way, in such a way as to see love in action — a truly heartfelt desire to act for the benefit of others. Yet, sadly enough, when I look at people around me, I feel like a Stone Age man looking helplessly at a broken electric circuit!
So, a question pops up: shouldn’t we all be studying this in school now, how to build these positive connections between us?
Why now? For one, my children have just turned big enough to start putting electrical circuits together — so the topic of education is at the top of my list! Then, of course, our world has never felt more interconnected, interdependent, and integral than today. And, to top it all off, the coronavirus has now firmly entered our minds, announcing a new reality — everything, education included, is up for a thorough review and an upgrade (or the bin)!
Indeed, with the pandemic came a big disillusionment, as if humanity got tired of itself: another holiday abroad, another day at the shops — that’s now the OLD future! Even for my generation of forty-somethings! let alone the generation of my kids.
No more pep talks for children, not along the lines of “be the top of your class, excel in physics and mathematics, run faster than the rest, score more goals, aim for the best university — or else, when you grow up you won’t be able to buy the life you want” —it’s no use, they just don’t “buy” it anymore.
And why would they — can’t they see with those big eyes of theirs that the self-centred life paradigm of their parents, rooted in the idea of limitless consumption, has ironically (although no one’s laughing anymore) reached its natural limit? And undoubtedly so, bringing the world to the brink of a total collapse: ecological, economical, political, you name it!
Fortunately, the nature itself gives us a clear direction for the NEW future, not least through the social-distancing, quarantines, masks and face shields brought about by the coronavirus — it gave us all a pep talk: “I’m now physically separating you from each other, so that you can re-evaluate your relationships, on all levels, in your family, at work, between countries, and see how wrong and egotistic they are! And how important to your well-being it is to correct them! Start learning now how to build positive, mutually-supportive and caring relationships with others and not just on the surface, but deep in your heart!”
The harsh reality is such that education might soon become my primary occupation — for, apparently, despite my twenty-year record of working for the same company, my employment is no longer secure — not after seeing 30% of my colleagues lose their job in the last two months! And if I do end up unemployed, I’d rather be learning something that I can pass on to my children, instead of spending my universal credit (or whatever the name of the new government hand-out will be) on pop-corn. Because passing on money, property and big jewels to your children is now the OLD future.
So this is what I am trying to show to my kids already now: that I start putting more and more of my heart into my relationship with them, with my wife, with our extended family, our friends, with all the people we meet in the street or online — little by little, every day a bit more, until the whole world is included.
I want my kids to have a great future, so I tell them that the NEW future is in building positive, mutually-beneficial connections between all people, in awakening the joy of human connection in the heart, in awakening that force of love in all humanity. And it does make me smile when my twelve-year-old daughter tells me with that know-it-all, somewhat condescending, yet endearing tone of voice: “Yes, papa, of course, we understand! Don’t you know the rest can be done by robots, machines and computers?”
