All You Need Is Love

I finished "A Wrinkle In Time" today while I was getting my oil changed.  I forgot how good of a book that is.  For those of you haven't read it, the premise of the book is Meg, her brother Charles Wallace (somebody please name their kid that and always call him by his full name) and their friend, Calvin go to Camazotz to save Meg's father.  He is being held there by IT (yes, IT) which is this big evil thing that controls this planet and takes away everybody's ability to make decisions. 

The ending of this book really got me thinking.  (Be warned, I'm about to get deep on you guys).  Meg is going back to Camazotz to save Charles Wallace, and Mrs. Which tells her that she has something that IT does not, and this thing that she has will help her save her brother.  She goes there and she tries to use her hate for IT as her power source to be strong enough to withstand, but IT feeds off the hate.  Then she remembers that before she had left to come back to Camazotz, Mrs. Which had told her that she loved her.  Meg remembers love and uses love to totally kick IT in the face (figuratively of course) and save her brother.

Earlier in the book, Meg was talking to a creature she called Aunt Beast who lived on a different planet.  She was trying to explain light, but Aunt Beast wasn't understanding it because they didn't have light on their planet the way Meg did on Earth.  Aunt Beast asked what it was used for and Meg said that they used it to see.  Then Aunt Beast said "We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen.  For the things which are seen are temporal.  But the things which are not seen are eternal." (Deep for a children's book, right?)

How does this tie together?  Well, I'm not sure, but it got me thinking about love and hate and all those unseen forces that drive our world.  I think as humans we tend to look at things in terms of what is tangible, what can be seen right in front of us.  And if we do branch out into the unseen forces, it's usually hate or discrimination that we use, because it's easier to hate something we don't understand than to love it.  We always fight with hate and intolerance, but what if we fought with love?  Love is just as tangible as a gun, and it has more power than even the most hateful feeling.

Awhile ago, Patch Adams came to my college, and in his speech he asked why we don't teach love in school.  We spend so much time teaching students reading, math, and history, but we don't take any time to teach love.  How do you teach love?  It's not tangible like math.  You can't see it.  I can't check the back of the book to make sure the answer is right.  But does that make it less important?

I think The Beatles had it right when they said, "All you need is love."



New Current Read:  The Lightning Theif by Rick Riordan