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for as long as i can remember, i’ve always been an advocate of 1) going with the flow and 2) staying balanced, or at least striving to be balanced. maybe it’s been a little too much jack johnson jamming or growing up near the sea, which i often refer to while writing quite a bit. i often forget that the moments i feel like i’m getting pulled under the currents and tides are in fact part of the flow of everything. i think it’s human nature to try stabilizing situations when times get rough. but by stabilizing things we defeat the point of the experience sometimes. stay with the uncertainty, dive into the unknown, it’s all about the struggle. in the act of balancing, we come alive. our sensations are thrown into a whirlpool, changing moment by moment; sometimes we feel secure and other times we feel precarious. in the long swim, we develop a tolerance for instability (and god knows that life is constantly up and down, high and low). as we come to accept this as a natural part of life, it becomes more familiar rather than frightening. rather than fleeing from the obstacles and the oncoming waves, we grow to love the challenge, to roll and rough it out and seek standing tall on the other side. the sense of being off balance is exhilarating and reminds me of the impermanence and fragility of life and to embrace how good it is to be fully in the moment and alive.

so while i may have a bit too much of the ocean invested in my words and heart, i really believe, like surfers, that we can come to feel the power of the waves, the majesty of the elements, and a sense of our own place in this swirling universe.

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“the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

a string of words I’ve been humming for the past week constantly more than ever. a song my grandfather and i spent hours sitting in front of the piano, singing and finding the right notes for every word a few years ago. a melody that has now engraved itself in my heart, my fingers reach and ache for those keys as soon as some ivories are in sight.

nat king cole had it right. love and compassion, i cannot stress enough, are the most powerful forces we have in life. it carries strength that defies and rises above all odds. it comes in many ways and many forms; undying and unconditional, big fat and sappy, platonic and friendly, passionately and romantic, confusing and bumpy, open and free, whatever it is, it’s love, and despite how skeptic you are, romantic diehard or not, we are all capable of doing it. it’s human.

it’s something quite hard to describe, to find a home in words, love. it’s hard to describe what is best defined only by itself, only to be explained in terms of it’s own experience. so i will trust that you all at least have had one or two encounters and can grasp of what loveliness it all is. it’s amazing right? that connection between two souls, the thread that ties us together. it makes us write sonnets and symphonies, we dedicate seas of novels to it, we build towers soaring in the sky powered by it. we suddenly want to be someone’s historian upon whom the world will call when they want to know about one of the most extraordinary souls to walk this earth, we want to share our lives fully with them, to make memories, to take part in their joys and hardships, stand side by side, climb by climb.

i cannot speak from my own experience but i can share from what i know from lovely friends and family that marriage is a beautiful thing. it’s a wonderful lifelong commitment to your soul mate, through the ups and downs, good bad and ugly, knowing that when you come home, your heart and love is waiting with open arms. it makes my own heart overflow watching couples grow old together, from taking that first vow, to cherishing every breathing moment, to building homes, to growing families, to living and loving happily, hand in hand, brimming and growing with the beauty of life to the very end.

and while that sends my heart overflowing with happiness, my heart does break when i still turn on the news and see that there are people out there who have to fight for something that is a human right. love is love. it has no gender, it has no boundaries, it’s more vast and full than anything in this universe, laws can not define it, only experiences. to quote another golden voice, sinatra says it perfectly, love and marriage, goes together like a horse and carriage. marriage is intensely personal and simply cannot be defined by anyone else other than the people who are sharing this extraordinary connection and bond together. that’s what true traditional marriage is, lifelong commitment. the fact that there are people still fighting gay marriage baffles me, honestly it’s happening already, it’s been happening for in fact as long as we’ve been pledging ourselves to each other, but tragically we seem to deny gay people the rights to obligations that are associated with their marriages and that simply is discrimination. why deny their right to share a happy and loving life with someone they were lucky enough to experience something amazing with. love is love and love will always be love. i don’t want to live in a world where we discriminate against that.

so to end this ramble short before my hippie colors start flying, i just wanted to say that i stand for love, equality for all goes with that. i have so much hope to wake up in a world that is overflowing with respect and compassion for humanity, for every single person.

long story short: all the world needs is love. we’ve all got hearts. let’s do it.