Stick with Love

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. January 15, 1929- April 4, 1968

Hello coffee lovers and avid readers! Welcome to Olive’s Tasty Quotas at Olive’s Café, where you get a taste of philosophy and messages from works of art.

When I think about love, it’s the energy that can either set us free or it can be mistaken for obsession as someone can trap us to make sure they’re not alone. But when there’s love, there’s also hate, and hate seems to have a powerful effect the same way love does. Or could it be that love has a more powerful effect than hate? I always ask that question whenever I think about those two powerful energy sources.

Then, I came across this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. when he says, “I decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” I heard the quote from listening to Common’s memoir Let Love Have the Last Word, and in it he expresses how love opened him to things that were deep inside him, and how his relationships with the people around him were demonstrations of how love always have the last word. The story went so deep, I only realized that as I got into his book, the love that he had was healing his wounds, and him sharing his story made me realize that if I let love have the last word, I would heal, too.

Out of all the quotes that were in the memoir, that quote by Dr. King was the one that captured my attention, especially when we’re at a time when we continue to fight each other. What I got from this quote is that love establishes freedom and peace. When I see people say they love each other, they look like they coexist in each other’s presence, and their embrace shares the energy that keeps them together. Love can be so powerful that even when people are apart from each other, it’s embedded in their hearts. Love not only brings and keeps people together, but it can also bring out the best in us from deep within. When it comes to love, we make peace with ourselves to allow equality with the people around us. Love levels us together so we can understand each other, at least that’s from my experience when it comes to sharing love with human beings, animals, and experiences. When we love ourselves, we make room to love other people as well, but not let them take us for granted to a point where we lose ourselves. It all seems like crazy talk, but think about it, what happens to you when you love something or someone? What do you see when you love?

When I love, I feel it in my heart, and it vibrates from my body as I embrace people and the moments we share. It gives me the energy to keep going and to conquer the time I have with the present so I can see a bright future. Although, I will admit, I do need to learn to accept my past, and be able to love and embrace my younger self, to tell her that I made it this far. She made it this far. I believe that love will let me do that. I have seen it before with others, and with love they stand strong against other forces that brings them down.

Then, there’s hate. When I see hate within us, it feels like there’s a dark cloud that hovers over us. And when we strike, it sends shockwaves that causes people around us repel them away from us because that energy is overwhelming, even the sound of music isn’t loud enough to shut it out. However, it also attracts people, and I can never understand why it does. Is it because hate gives us an opportunity to use things outside of ourselves to be our scapegoats so we can divert people to the other direction, therefore ignoring our flaws? If it does, then wouldn’t that make things worse for us? I feel like hate gives us so much unwanted attention, and it makes us judge each other based on our thoughts, words, and action. At least for me, hate brings so much burden that weighs us down because we hold on to it as we isolate ourselves away from others and traps us into the darkness. Not only that, when we hate, it feels like we’re burning everything in our paths, and they all turn into ash, making it so hard to recover. We lose trust within each other, we lose respect, and we end up even more alone than before. The burden gets so heavy, we tend to lose energy the longer we carry it. Not everyone will see it, but it becomes exhausting when we have hate. I believe that all the energy that we use for hate should be used towards loving each other. The way I see it, hate closes us off from each other.

Hate gets in the way of letting us enjoy moments with others in our circle, it gets in the way of opportunity, and it gets in the way of our happiness. When we love, it opens our eyes to things we either have never seen before or brings in a new light to things that were already there. With love, we cherish those around us, we let go of the fear that holds us back, and we embrace ourselves for who we are as human beings. Dr. King’s words demonstrates that love is liberating, and we open our arms to bring peace, but it starts with ourselves, so when we let go of the things that we love, we understand that it was meant to be. To this day, I still don’t understand why people carry on hate on their shoulders and in their minds, and people may not be able to understand why we love things and other people. What I do know is that love and hate are two powerful energy sources, but I choose love, because it gives me hope and faith, and it brings me closer to happiness, things that hate can never allow me to have.

One thing’s for sure, love can be so powerful, it can lift us out from the darkness and helps us heal from the pain that isolates us. It gives us the freedom to be who we truly are and do what we’re meant to do.

Thank you for tuning in on Olive’s Tasty Quotas at Olive’s Café!