A call for Love.

Picture: https://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/protests-continue-in-nyc-minnesota-after-philando-castle-and-alton-sterling-fatal-shootings/ 

It was my senior year of high school, and I hadn’t had the best day. Although it was a Friday and I was planning on going to my school's football game with a  bunch of friends that night, the day had me beat, and I was not in the mood to deal with anything more that might present itself as “difficult.” Thankfully, I had already had my last class and only my free period remained. I rounded the corner into the dark, eerily-lit hallway where the senior lockers were. There were only a few people in there, and most of them were getting ready for class. And then, I heard it.

I don’t really remember the kid who said it or even the specific remark, but I do remember who it was about. A junior boy on the football team had just made a snide, unkind, adolescent remark to one of his buddies about our head of school.

Before I go on, I should explain something about our head of school. He was an incredibly kind man who cared about the students. On top of it, people really had no idea how much work he put into his job. He did his work silently and humbly, watching most of the students from afar with a careful, watchful eye, always having our best interests at heart. What was heartbreaking to me, was that there was only a small percentage of students who understood the full magnitude of how much he loved and cared for the school. There’s one more important detail about him, but I’ll get to that in a second.

As I heard the comment that was made. I paused only for a moment before I could almost feel my blood boiling inside me. How dare Mr. Football make such a remark. Before I knew what was happening, I had grabbed the edges of his jersey to pull his face inches from mine. He towered above me (not hard since I’m only 5’3”), but I didn’t care. I talked in a low, don’t-mess-with-me-or-I’ll-kick-your-ass voice. “Don’t you dare…EVER…say anything unkind about that man ever again. Do you hear me? Or SO help me…” I had no idea how to finish that sentence, and before I could say anything I would really regret, I let go of his jersey and began to walk away wondering what had gotten into me.

“W-why do you care?” The words were crafted very carefully so as not to further tick off the tiny, blonde, psychotic senior.

I stopped and turned around again. “He’s my uncle.” As I turned back to head to my locker, I heard him say, “Oh…I…I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” I turned my head back and stared at him for a quick moment to read his body language. His face had turned a few shades red and he hung his mop of hair a little lower than before.

A part of me wanted to take it all back in that moment, but I didn’t want to excuse what he had said, so I turned and continued walking down the hall. By the time I had gotten to my locker, my hands were shaking. I began to spin the lock on my locker, but I was completely unable to remember the combination.

Seriously, what had gotten into me? Who was this girl? On one hand, I felt like a badass. It was not me at all. In fact, the Lauren most people knew matched my height - cute and sweet, and I was usually wearing a smile on my face. No one - including me - would have expected this out of me. On the other hand, I had acted completely irrationally and out of anger.

I didn’t blame Mr. Football for not knowing he was talking about my uncle. Although Mr. Football and I didn’t know each other, we went to a small, private high school where you at least knew who everyone was even if you weren't friends.

I had carefully concealed the fact that I was related to the head of school since my freshman year. My father had been head of school at my previous school, and while most days were like any other students’, there were definitely days when being related to the head of school did not make life easier.

When I decided to go to the high school where my uncle was head of school, it was slightly easier since I would no longer share a last name with the man in charge. Although, with what had just transpired, I really wouldn’t have cared at that point. I had also just learned the hard way that covering up my familial relationship hadn't made my high school career all that much easier.

What people often fail to realize is that not only does the head of school working his tail off, somehow people forget how lonely that office can be. While the job at the top of any company (whether school or corporate) can often seem to be the one you want, it’s also lonely at the top when you have to make all the shots. There are a lot of public decisions that have to be made based on confidential matters. So often when the decision the head has made is actually the best one, the average person doesn’t have all of the facts and can easily paint the head as a monster.

As the daughter and niece of men in this position, I understood this fact all-too-well. On top of it, people forget when they turn to say something bad about anyone that they’re talking about another human being. They’re talking about someone’s dad, uncle, friend, grandfather, son, husband, etc. And make no mistake, I’m no angel. It’s not as though I’ve never said something unkind about someone else, but that doesn’t make it excusable either.

When I woke up the next morning, there were two halves of me. There was the half of me that was proud for what I had said. I couldn’t believe I had had the gumption to speak up and actually have the courage to stop this guy in his tracks. Perhaps Mr. Football would think twice next time before saying something so snide and hurtful about someone else.

The other half of me felt…gross…and it took years for me to figure out why.

Over the past several years, it seems single acts of violence have gone up.

Shooting rates have gone up and spread like wildfire. It seems that everywhere you turn, there’s a new one. And, who’s to say where it started, but there have been so many, it’s hard to get them all straight. There have been school shootings, ISIS shootings, police shootings, any number of the shootings that began and sustained the need for the #BlackLivesMatter movement. At one point, I read a statstic that there was almost one shooting a day in 2015.

But 2016 has come, and with it, more shootings. There was Turkey and Brussels and Orlando Philando Castille and Alton Sterling and now tonight: Dallas. Where does the violence end?

It's not just the shootings. Let’s not forget the 2016 presidential debates. Clinton or Trump? Trump or Clinton? Or Bernie? It seems the majority of Clinton supporters say, “Well, I don’t like Clinton, but ANYONE but Trump,” and vice versa for Trump. There's violence that have broken at their political rallies and it seems almost everyone has done their fair share of name-calling spit-fire online.

The hate and fear never seems to end, and so with it comes more fear and more hate.

It took all of this to figure out why I had felt so gross about my tiny outburst from over 10 years ago: I had answered hate with hate. Yes, I stood up for myself (or rather, my family), but at what cost? Was anger really the way to go?

You can’t solve a problem with the same problem.

Right now, it feels like evil is winning. It feels like evil is its own entity – like the devil exists, has come to earth and has made himself nice and comfy in our homes and in our minds, trying to scream, "I'm real! I exist!" But there is something so much more powerful than all of that: Love.

My call is not for gun control, for stop-the-violence, or go to war, make the government change, or to force people to stop using the All Lives Matter hashtag because they don't understand what #BlackLives Matter means. My call is for Love. And to Love first. 

Do all the other things. I'm not saying don't take action; don't call law reinforcements; don't have laws changed. But I am saying that whatever you do, do it with Love. 

To me, everything that is supposed to fall into place will fall into place after we love first. I think it's only evil that says, "yeah, yeah, we'll get to the love stuff later. We need better gun laws. Get out of my way, jerk. I wasn't letting you into my lane of traffic. I'm in a rush."

ONLY Love can drive out hate and fear. And make no mistake, fear is no friend to anyone. Fear is what limits us. It’s what makes anyone want to carry a gun in the first place. Fear leads us to say things we don’t mean, to hide when we need to speak up, to falsely use power we don’t have to make ourselves heard, to judge instead of help, to gossip instead of reaching out…

Fear is no friend.

Love is our only friend.

Love also doesn’t start by someone else doing it. It’s something anyone and anything can do. You have the power over your own actions. You can love yourself, love your friend, and eventually love the enemies you’ll eventually discover you don’t have, because fear brews that one, too.

And if even that seems to hard, start with gratitude. Fear would like to tell you that you don’t have anything to be grateful for. Everyone is killing everyone and nothing is good right now.

Wrong.

Every single person on this earth can find something to be grateful for. That much, I do know. Start with gratitude. Gratitude grows into Love. Love is something we could all stand to get better at.

A couple of years ago at my school’s gala, we had an acoustic guitarist who spoke to the crowd and said, “Practice only what you want to be good at.”

I don't know about you, but I'd like to get better at loving.

People want love and comfort. I think of when I was a child and I felt scared and all I wanted was to be picked up by one of my parents and have them tell me everything would be okay.

And then everything was.

You don’t have to agree with me, and it's your prerogative if you want to judge this instead of following it, but those are my two cents. Getting down from my soap box now.

Lauren out.