live righteously and love everyone

… was what it said on the tag of my hippie tea. I liked it so much that I got a piece of packing tape and stuck it on Lucky’s frame, so every time I looked down, I’d see that message.

Love everyone.

I want to believe this is possible. If you loved everyone, what would it look like? Would you have to expand your definition of love? What if — gasp! — there’s more than one kind of love, for friends, partners, family, self, humanity as a whole? What’s the root of these different kinds of love?  

To me, it’s acceptance. When you acknowledge and accept someone’s imperfections because those imperfections make them who they are, that’s love. Our flaws are our hardest truths, and they give love a place to grow. And if that’s true, then we should all just accept ourselves and stop trying to be perfect.  

Ha, ha. I say that, but of course I don’t believe it. I mean, I want everyone else to love themselves and be happy, but like… I need to lose at least 10 pounds before I can start working on self-acceptance.

“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” as the great sage RuPaul says. Well RuPaul, I’m gonna try.

In yoga, it’s common to set an intention before beginning practice, something to meditate on. What if my intention was to extend love to everyone I met on this trip? To treat all the strangers I meet with acceptance and respect and acknowledgement of the light within them, the light we all share? If I extended love to the people I met, it could only make the world a more loving place. And with love, everything’s possible. Even a poor kid from Malawi going to college in America.