Stolen from Facebook

I originally wrote this October 13, 2009, but felt it could and should be reposted. On some level, I've very proud of this little paragraph, something I truly believe and still resonates in me. I don't think I have come close to achieving it, nor will I ever, but it's always something I'd like to keep in my heart and hope to ever strive for.

I will say, it was largely inspired by The Four Agreements and its aftermath on my outlook on the world, though I've been influenced by many things since then, and this still holds true. I hope others can find some truth in it as well.

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Imagine how beautiful life would be if you looked at everyone around you, and chose to love them a little bit more each day.

Imagine if you actively chose to look past flaws, find people's strengths, and revel in the glory and beauty of their individuality. Imagine if you did everything you could to cultivate those things worthy in life and use them as foundations for new skills, strengths, passions, and beauties.

Imagine how beautiful life would be if you were to wake up and declare, "Hate has no place in my life. I live for creation, the uplifting on mankind, the love of others, the compassion that I am capable of. It is not a duty, nor an obligation, but a choice to arbitrate peace and love between everyone in my life. I choose not to ostracize others as pariahs, but to love them unconditionally and cultivate the beauty in their life and my own."

Everyone has a capacity to do great harm with their words, to destroy relationships and leave people emotionally desolate. It is a survival instinct to lash out, demean, condescend, to do anything to make oneself feel superior to another. Everyone does it, often times without realizing it.

Imagine how beautiful life would be if, every time we felt a negative emotion, be it anger, frustration, disgust, hate (the vilest of all negative emotions), we stepped back and scolded ourselves and said, "How can I show my love for this person? How can I encourage the good *without* demeaning someone just as valuable, worthy of love and respect, as myself?"

What if we made the proactive choice to set a positive example, realizing we control our fate, our mood, no one else? If we feel negative because of someone else's actions, it is our individual responsibility to find the positive emotion from it, the positive situation in it, and to encourage a greater good. How beautiful would life be if, instead of expecting others to set a cheery world for us, we looked around and saw the world as cheery and beautiful for what it is?

We are the masters of our emotions, moods, fate, lives. We are the instigators of everything around us, whether we like it or not. Our every word, our every action, echoes and ripples through the social net that surrounds us. We have a choice to cultivate beauty, or to dwell on negativity. Happiness, beauty, and love of your fellow man are all choices, each one having a profound implication on our lives and the lives of those around us.

It's a struggle for me to avoid those negative emotions every day. It's a change in my mindset, and I'm a totally different person from a year ago because of it, and the change isn't finished. But its a beautiful change to make, and one I hope to inject into my life a little bit more each day.

So, I say again: Imagine how beautiful life would be if you looked at everyone around you, and chose to love them a little bit more each day.