Make Love Visible
Make Love Visible! I think this is going to become my mantra for 2020. I read a post on Facebook the other day that really hit home for me. It was in one of those silly posts that says to copy and past it into your status (you know the type of post that I have always sworn I would never do.....) Well, this post had a line in it that I found so powerful that I actually copied the post as my status 😨😲
The sentence that hit deep for me was "I will not stand idly by and live in a world where love is invisible." The text in the post gave examples of simple kindness, the type of things anyone can do, to improve peoples' day and show love. When I read the post it instantly hit me like a light went on in my head, and I felt that many thoughts that were floating around in my brain were now nicely tied together with a ribbon. And the ribbon read "Make Love Visible"
The many thoughts that now make up my
Make Love Visible philosophy come from so many different places, people and organizations. I can hardly take credit for this idea. I do however feel that this is a concept that is worthy of spreading and making famous! I am a firm believer that there are more people who are basically good in the world than there are evil. There is way more good, or at the very least neutral, in the world than there is evil. I believe this with all of my heart. The issue it that people are more likely to perpetuate negativity than they are to spread positivity and because of this the evil people of the world get all the attention. Think about it in your own life! On Facebook you see people post something bad that is going on in the world, and the whole internet has to comment about how horrible it is! But when something good happens people just go about their day like it was nothing. We seem to have become numb to positivity. It takes a drastically positive event to get noticed, but something as minor as getting cut off in traffic is worth posting about on social media. People are much more likely to share a negative review than they are a positive one. At the surface that makes it seem like things are all going to hell, but I do not feel that is the case at all! It is just that positivity, and LOVE, have become abstract ideas that people think about, talk about, post about on their Instagram, but seldom manifest into reality. That is why it is so important that there is an army of people taking up the mission to Make Love Visible. Every little bit is more important that anyone can imagine. Hold the door for people, let them go ahead of you in line, smile at EVERYONE! These little acts make the love that is in the world visible and will begin a contagious reaction that is our only hope to a peaceful and bright future.
In the rest of this post I will briefly share a few of the ideas that make this statement powerful to me, and why I chose to share my thoughts here when I read the words "I will not stand idly by and live in a world where love is invisible."
I am going to start by talking about one of the most influential things in my life:
HapKiDo! HapKiDo,
simply translated, means the Art of Coordinated Power. Like most things, a simple definition doesn't always do justice and there can be many interpretations and applications. The definition of HapKiDo is no different, and you can use it to explain how the martial arts techniques themselves work, or you can dig into it and use it to explain a philosophy for life itself that a HapKiDoist lives by. HapKiDo is actually 3 words: "Hap" means Coordination/Harmony, "Ki" means Energy/Power, and "Do" means Art/Way. So what does all this have to do with Making Love Visible? Well one way to look at the meaning of HapKiDo is that it is the way of coordinating the potential power that is inside us all with the actual power that we express outwardly. One example of this is when we take the love that is inside us for our fellow humans, and make it visible through our actions. HapKiDo gives us the physical, mental and spiritual strength to turn the potential we have into reality. A good martial artist is a person of action, not theory. Thinking about love towards one another is not enough, there has to be action on those thoughts.
The next influence I want to mention in the cultivation of my Make Love Visible idea is a powerful demonstration of what it looks like when people Make Love Visible. I work with a non-profit group here in Atlanta called
Project Live Love whose mission is to influence culture through love in action. Project Live Love aims to find people who are motivated by Love, and provide an opportunity for them to put that Love into action! This organizations mission is making love visible, and the amazing men and women who participate blow me away time and time again. The founder of the organization, Drew Benton, told me that one of the reasons he started Project Live Love was because he was constantly finding himself talking with people who wanted to do something meaningful and good. The issue was that they did not know how or what to do, and because of this they rarely mobilized. That is where the term Live Love comes from; it is not enough to talk about loving your fellow man, you have to live it!
(If you are interested in donating to Project Live Love, Click Here: https://projectlivelove.com/donate/)
The final influence I would like to discuss is last in this post but definitely not least! A huge influence for me striving to live out my life with a Make Love Visible mindset is my family. Growing up my family was always very close knit. I was able to spend a lot of time around both my immediate family as well as many uncle, aunts and cousins. All of the varying perspectives these people brought into my life, along with the fact that I am the youngest of five kids, allowed me to gain first hand experience of real life from a very young age. There was my Dad always telling me to work hard, stand up for what is right and never sacrifice your values for what is
easy. Pairing perfectly with this there was my Mom stressing the importance of being kind, teaching me that with the support of family you will never feel alone and there is nothing you cannot do with their support, so never take them for granted. Possibly the most impressive thing about my parents is that not only did they teach and instill these values in me, they lived it in their own lives! They shared with me the things they thought were important to living a good life, then they showed me what it looked like in their lives. Growing up my parents always made sure to not just say how they felt but they showed it in their actions. They showed me how powerful a force it is when you Make Love Visible, and that experience has given me the motivation to reach heights that without it I wouldn't dream would be possible.
My hope and request is that after reading this you take a deep look at your life. Look within yourself, and at the people around you, and see that there is a lot of love in you and in the world. I hope that you will see there is a lot more love out there than there is hate. The problem I see is the few evil people in the world, the ones filled with hate, are not holding that in. Love is not an abstract idea, or something you have save inside of you. Let it out, make it visible, drown out the hate, and brighten the world!
With Love,
RJ LoPresti
www.RJLoPresti.com
#NextLevel
