A contemplation on love, courage, and opening the heart

I love to love. Not just romantically, but also in every moment and aspect of life.
I feel the world needs more love. More kindness. More togetherness.

While I started writing these words, the song What The World Needs Now Is Love started playing in my head. It was written 60 years ago… and yet here we are, still needing the same thing. Maybe even more.

What does it mean to live in love?

This question keeps circling in me.

Does it mean I need to see everything as beautiful?
Does it mean filtering the world through pink-tinted glasses?
Does it mean loving everyone and everything, no matter what?

It sounds sweet, doesn’t it? A little tempting, even. Part of me wishes I could love everyone and only see the beauty. But if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think it’s possible. And probably, it is not the way to truly bring us closer—to one another or to ourselves.

Choosing transparency over filters

For me, love isn’t about pretending everything is good. It’s about seeing clearly. Transparent lenses, not rose-colored ones.

That means noticing the pain, the ugliness, the cruelty that exists—and still not losing sight of the magic, the kindness, the beauty. Holding both at once.

It’s not easy. It means opening my heart fully to the world and risking heartbreak, again and again. But perhaps that’s what makes love so alive.

The courage to open anyway

To be in the darkness, to feel pain and suffering—and then, in the very next breath, to feel that exquisite opening when light penetrates and compassion rises. That expansion of the heart when love floods in.

It’s a dance of breaking and mending, over and over.

Or, as Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes in her poem Because:

“To be ridiculously courageous in love.
To open the heart like a lilac in May,
knowing freeze is possible
and opening anyway.”

And maybe that’s it: to love anyway.

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