Somethings are born with us, pre-loaded in our soul. Love is one of such. This is not about flowers at Saint Valentine's day and definitely, not about sex. The child in the car seat doesn't care if you are white, albino, pagan, cute or ugly. His smile and his waving hands show he sees and accepts you as a fellow human. This acceptance is the first and the Godlike love. All plus, no minus.
Now, hatred is learnt as you grow. Let's call it rejection, in contrast to the Godlike acceptance of our shared humanity. It is a cherry picking culture from the shopping list of your family, your tribe, your race and other walled in groups you belong to by default.
Here's where the smiling son of the Plantation owner gradually learns to see the black children as slaves and tools and subhumans. The learning process continues until he sees nothing wrong with whipping the living daylight out of his neighbours. When he becomes President, he'd rather spend a fortune building a wall against immigrants and trillions on weapons that can exterminate a city at the push of a button. Probably feels good about Corona virus reducing his enemies in number. Funny enough, that's when he writes poetry about love and buys the biggest love cards and dances to the sweetest love songs. He becomes unsure what love is and how it's quite different from sex and orgies. Love shrinks from a cosmos that calls to every human soul to a little bedroom where no one but your better half is welcome. You could even end up hating half of your better half, if not all of her. At the time your darling becomes the devil in your life, you have become nothing like what God made you and you may have come to reject/hate the very idea that God exists.
What else did God- oh, you don't believe in God- what did nature or evolution preload in you?
Fear.
I know, you are the original Braveheart. But if your mum's still alive, have her remind you of when the noise of thunder got you scrambling under her sheets.
If you're one of the lucky humans, you have learnt something beautiful in our sojourn on earth. It's a great lamp that lights a path through the valley of the shadows of fear.
Hope, it is. The lamp in our existential dark space by which we search for the fragments of what's left of love in our soul.
Happiness is preloaded. It's not something Givenchy or Zuckerberg can give you. It's something you lose when you can't strike a balance between the things you brought from the womb or heaven and the things you uploaded into yourself as you grew up.
Luckily, it's never too late to reconnect with love, hope and happiness.
