Now is the time to love

Since the beginning of humanity and particularly over the past one hundred years, we have made tremendous advancements in how we live.

Technology has given us the radio, the TV, the plane, the car, the computer and the smart phone. Science has extended the length of our lives and bettered the quality, while expanding our awareness of the entire cosmos.

We have conquered and covered the entire world with train tracks, shipping lines, roadways, electrical wires and data connections.

If you wanted to, you could literally point to any city on the globe and be there in under 24 hours, most likely with air-conditioning and Wi-Fi.

But there is a final frontier that has yet to be crossed, an increasingly crucial quality that remains in its latency. While we have conquered and crossed the world with our intellect, we have yet to conquer the world with our love.

Developing the heart

Progress has left the heart behind a long time go. While we as a species have matured tremendously in many areas, our morality, emotional understanding and love continue to remain in their infancy.

Often we are like irresponsible children given the keys to a car we do not know how to drive. The first atomic bomb was tested in May of 1945, and just four months later it was used to massacre over 200,000 people. It would be another six years before we decided to create electricity from this new source of energy.

Despite all we supposedly know, over 700 million people in this world still do  not have access to clean water, while over 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. Someone dies of hunger every four seconds.

We are constantly building incredible machines that destroy our environment hundreds of times faster than we can come up with systems to protect it.

And while we have treatment for many previously deadly and debilitating diseases, we do not yet have solutions for the disease of loneliness, for those suffering from being unloved.

Cultivate kindness

There are too many people in this world hungry for bread, hungry for forgiveness, hungry to be seen.

If we are to evolve our species, we must evolve our love.

We must develop the heart and put the qualities of kindness, compassion and understanding next to our ability to read and write.

We can go the far regions of space and we can make models of the most infinitesimal movements of matter and energy, but the heart will always be our final frontier.

The time is now to develop the heart, to learn how to love each other and to love the Earth. Let us begin today, without delay.

<3

-Zach

PS. As the Dalai Lama put it,

No matter what is going on
Never give up
Develop the heart
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Be compassionate
Not just to your friends
But to everyone
Be compassionate
Work for peace
In your heart and in the world
Work for peace
And I say again
Never give up
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up