Stories of Kindness from Around the World

“Do you believe in God?” I asked him.

He smiled and shrugged, then cocked one eyebrow.

“Why? Do you?”

“Sometimes,” I said. I grinned at him and he laughed.

“I think, if God existed, he — or she — wouldn’t allow so much suffering,” he said.

“Yes, that’s a thorny bit,” I admitted.

We were quiet for a while, sipping our coffee. This was my favorite time of Saturday morning. I have loved this man for more than 20 years, and yet we have rarely had time for philosophical discussions. We had had the God conversation once or twice over the years. Our marriage and our individual lives had gone through countless challenges in those years, So the things we might have believed on our first date, or our tenth anniversary, may have changed.

“If you could have one superpower designed so that you could fix one big problem in the world, what would it be?”

He didn’t hesitate. “I would end hate and all the results of hate. Racism, fanaticism, violence.”

“Oh, that’s a good one. How would you do that?”

He blinked. “Hmm. I don’t know.”

“What about…”

He laughed. “I know your theory about ancestral memory, but what if that just ends up making things worse? And do I really want the memories of the best, and worst things all my ancestors have done from the beginning of time?”

‘Oooooh.” I had never thought of that. It was hard enough to deal with my own memories.

“Yeah, I don’t know how I’d do it, but ending hate isn’t enough. There has to be reparation and justice.”

I agreed with this, and he knew it. This was something we had talked about for hours over the past year and a half. Woke is a painful state, but we didn’t want to be blind and asleep again. Ever. These ancestral memories came hard, were heard, and understood. These were now ours. We let the pain in so we could never forget.

“What would your superpower be?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Healing maybe, with a touch. I have to think about it.”

I woke this morning with an idea.

What if God said, “Let there be light,” and the light was God, sent into each of us? All of us.

What if the eternal soul was God + individual uniquely each of us?

What if we were all, at our cores, simply love?

What if s/he sent us here to Earth but blinded us to the truth, the way so many have been blind until recent memory to the ancestral pain of Black Americans?

Then, what if the only way to end world hunger, to heal the world, to make reparations, to make sure there is justice, to end wars, is if we all find our way through the jungle of our minds to the truth. To love.

What if, once we knew, our combined power could fix everything?

“Love is what we’re born with. Fear is what we learn here.”

So my superpower would be -- starting with me -- visiting every person in the world, holding my hands on either side of their face, looking into their eyes, and -- like a vampire lifting compulsion -- saying, "Remember."

Image by FelixMittermeier from Pixabay 

What If (2) is here.