“What if our human civilization and our experiences were structured by and oriented toward the delightful exploration of the finer details of ecstasy?
What if, when we met, we exchanged singing seeds, shared stories of psychedelic expeditions through the portals of normal wakeful states, and swapped wisdoms and rituals on navigating the ambivalence of life?
What would life look like?”
–Bayo Akomolafe, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences
Meet each day with love.
A friend shared these words with me and I have been thinking about the importance of the start of the day. The ways my mind catches on something and how I might be intentional about the initial thoughts of the early hours. Some days, accessing love feels good and within reach. Other days, I must first unfreeze and unpeel all the layers of worry that accumulate with each headline in the news feed. Unfreezing, remembering love and acknowledging its power is the work I must do, starting from scratch each day.
In all honesty, our dog invites us to greet each day with love. His early morning wake up jump onto the bed, his tail wagging, his enthusiasm, and the constant reminder that it’s a beautiful morning for a walk. Each morning his actions say, “meet the day with love.”
Love is not the stuff of valentine’s day cards. Just like chocolate, which is so often smoothed and sweetened for mass consumption, love in its authentic form can be gritty, tied to the earth in ancestral and unknowable ways. Love is the humus that cradles and germinates joy, hope, healing, liberation, and abundance. Love is also expansive and makes space for pain and anger.
When I’m engaged with my community (including the non-human community of rivers, landscapes, animals, and elements that sustain me), I’m moving forward with love, and love is power. This power can be unleashed by digging through the worry and anger. Coming out the other side of that worry and anger moves us toward the world we want. This cannot happen without intention, without the courage to expand our vision and imagine something different for generations to come than the penned-in future our current world might make us feel is inevitable.
Meeting each day with love can be done step by step, in small, accumulating ways. Each action creates a ripple effect, not only out in the world, but within me. When I can take action to do just one thing about my worry or anger or despair, I’m motivated. “All right,” I’ll tell myself. “You wrote one letter.” A small act, but it all builds. (Replace “writing a letter” with any love-motivated action that feels accessible to you!) This is the way we can build joy, build power, and counter the current narratives. This is the way we can build the actual manifestation of our shared vision of loving interconnection that celebrates our kinship.
Meet each day with love.
With love and in community,
The CDE Team