In honor of John Lennon, I light a metaphorical candle.

I wrote this a month ago, for a class.

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“Imagine what would happen if you chose to love as passionately as a terrorist chooses to hate.”

This is how I close all of my emails. The power behind the message is somewhat lost, I am afraid, in the informality of web communication, but I keep it there in hopes that the recipients might pause, and consider.

What would happen if a person made the conscious decision to love, and not only to love, but to love with as much passion as a terrorist – an all-to-familiar symbol of evil in this world – chooses to hate? The idea is not my own. It stems from a conversation I had with my mother one pleasant June afternoon about a book she was reading by Marianne Williamson. I have not read the book, although I eagerly read the passage afterwards, yearning for the exact words that had set my mind on fire. To say I was inspired is somewhat of an understatement. I wanted to tell the world – I wanted to shout as loud as I could, “I have the answer!”

What is the answer? Love. It is cliché; it is a favorite theme among screenwriters at Hollywood and novelists in the paperback industry, but I believe that it is real – much more real than any box-office chick flick.

I believe in the power of energy. I believe that the feelings, and the words and the thoughts that we feel, say, and think produce energy. And any physicist will tell you that energy – enough of it – produces matter. Matter equals reality, and it is in reality we on this world dwell.

Imagine what would happen…

Someone who makes it his or her life’s mission to destroy does not do so casually. That statement seems obvious, however I believe this point is important: When one of our modern-day, Islamic-oriented terrorists chooses to become such, one then accepts one’s role – accepts and embraces. A terrorist does not suppose that he or she will blow some cars up one day, and then go back to his or her day job the next. A terrorist does not go half-heartedly into Baghdad, or Damascus, or London, with the hope of maybe making a statement. No, being a terrorist is not a hobby. It is an exercise in passion. The passion of hate consumes the lives and cultures of entire peoples (a generalization), and has spanned thousands of years. The choices that these people (terrorists) make directly reflect their passion, and they teach that passion, that zeal, to their children, and their children’s children.

Love, of course, is the opposite of hate. In this realm of the relative, both must exist, but lately it seems like the scales have tipped dramatically towards hate. So, really – what would happen if we all chose to love with this same passion that we see everyday?

I have a message. I have shared it with you, in hopes that you might pause, and consider. I share it with as many people as I can, and more importantly, I try to practice. It is hard. But in this world, where I see negative energies, fears and hates and terrors, forming matter – forming hurricanes, and earthquakes and tsunamis and more fear and hate and terror – I believe that every time I choose to love – to smile at someone, or to laugh, or wonder at the sunrise over the ridge – every time I choose to be passionate about love, then maybe I can make things better. The thought sustains me, and it keeps me alive.