All you need is <3

12 - All You Need Is Love.mp3 -

Like Dana said, everybody has a different opinion as to what we humans are actually entitled to.

When we arrive on Earth, we come with empty hands: there is nothing we hold grasped in our hands as we push our way out of our mother’s wombs. This is something we “must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity” (Coetzee X88).

The only thing we have, so to speak, is our mind. It is the one place where it is possible to have absolute control (not that it often happens). The mind is the collection of our thoughts, feelings, ideas and emotions: it is “the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons” (Merriam Webster). Thus, by having this consciousness, we have our thoughts, ideas and emotions, and we accordingly perform actions and deeds in the world. In my opinion, this is what we are entitled to in the world – our ideas, thoughts, feelings, and perhaps most importantly, our actions.

If this is all that we have, I don’t want to spoil it. I don’t want to be like creepy David Laurie, grossly obsessed with a girl many years his senior, with a mind that “has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go…[where] he ought to chase them out, sweep the premises clean” (Coetzee X76). The mind is a special thing – we should “cultivate and take care of it” (Genesis 115).

Thus, the way to make the best use of our precious gift of the mind and the ability and potential it provides is through good action and good deeds. Our interactions with each other, and the world around us should be kind and loving – the people who achieve the ability to be unfading bearers of love and kindness are the ones who shine in the world. After all, it is God who says in the Genesis, “Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on earth” (Genesis 115). It can easily be argued that the statement gives us free reign to do whatever we may please with the animals of the world – that we can eat them, we can torture them, we can slaughter them. But the word master shouldn’t be taken in that manner. Doesn’t master also imply being the disciplinarian, the overseer, and the caretaker? We should use our intellectual abilities to watch over and take care of our fellow beings on Earth, instead of killing them. Besides, in the next line God says, “See, I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this shall be your food” (Genesis 115).” Thus, eat plants not animals. He said so. But in all sincerity, is makes the most sense to me to act in a way that least hurts the least amount of beings.


On a completely different track – although I’ve always wanted to, this was the first time I ever actually read parts of the Bible. I have always heard the stories of creation and how Adam and Eve came to be, but this was kind of exciting. In this day and age of evolution and science (and in no way offense to anybody) the portrayal of the creation of the “Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault profound,” (Virgil X122) in seven days, and the way God is characterized are a little hard to believe. However, I like that is such an commandingly empowering story – it leaves you with a sense of what good/productivity you are supposed to accomplish in your life. You don’t necessarily have to believe in God, but I guess it helps multitudes of you do. And with this limited amount of time we each have on Earth, it doesn’t really matter what you believe, think, have or don’t have. After all, “you return to the soil as you were taken from it. For dust you are and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 117). All that can speak for us are our actions – so fill them with as much love as is possible.