Jack Layton's letter to Canadians ended with these words:
"Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.
Darwin believed that human emotions evolved via natural selection with fear and anger evolving earlier than social emotions such as love and hope. Anger and fear can find us quite easily. Love and hope have to be chosen deliberately and consciously. It seems, though, that after a while of deliberately choosing love and hope, those choices start to be made automatically.
Anger and fear drive us apart. Love and hope bring us together. "So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world."
How can we loving and hopeful? The quickest route to that is not being self-centered. Anger, greed, hatefulness has to do with putting ourselves at the centre of things. Moving the focus away from ourselves so that we are thinking of the good of other people makes love and hope as natural as breathing.
ReplyDeleteThank you Peter. Beautifully said.
ReplyDeleteAdrienne writes, "Yes, anger and fear are both innate and do have their uses, but to practice choosing love and hope makes life better for all of us."
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