love, love we do...

I hereby promise to use proper capitalization in my blog.

Yesterday I read an article about Sheryl Crow and in it, she talked about surviving breast cancer and breaking off her engagement and how both of these things, these tragedies, contributed to her decision to adopt her son, Wyatt. The point she made was that even after surviving such heart ache, she still had love to give. How amazing is that? Despite the hardships we face, we still have the capacity to love. It took my breath away.

I really started thinking about the possibility that human beings are designed to be this way. Right now, I consider myself agnostic, so I won't try to bring religion into this. I think this is more about the spiritual powers of the universe anyway. We've evolved and evolved and evolved, and one of our enduring characteristics is the ability to love. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

In my life, I have experienced some pretty devestating tragedies. They are the sort of things that some people don't recover from, the sort of life events that give people an excuse to act poorly and behave inappropriately for years to come. When I was on a retreat in high school, a family friend wrote me a letter of encouragement and in it, she said something along the lines of, "Alana, if you had lost your way in life, we would have excused you and we would have understood, but you didn't do that. You've survived great adversity and made us proud." (I might have embellished the "made us proud" part...oh well...) I think about that letter a lot. Did I have an excuse to be a jerk because my life was harder than others? The thought never crossed my mind.

In 2006, my Dad died unexpectedly. It's still so raw, so hard to accept, so sad. There are days when I pick up my phone and forget that I can't just dial his number to talk to him. Shortly after he passed away I went to a couple sessions with a counselor. I remember pouring my heart out to this woman as I tried to work through my grief and the one thing she said to me that meant anything was, "You have an amazingly optimistic spirit. Despite your suffering, you still exude such a positive energy."

I can't speak to the accuracy of those observations. Did I turn out alright? Maybe. Am I a source of positive energy? Could be. Who knows? Who am I to say? The point is this: that despite my personal tragedies, people could still see the hope inside of me. I didn't ask for it, the hope was just there. It was in me like the ability to love is in each of us.

I've experienced sadness and heart ache but I've never felt that I had no more love to give. As I wrote earlier, the thought never crossed my mind. We can all give more, we can all be more and we can all do more... Sometimes we just need a reminder that there really is no excuse.

Be love.