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Bringing Love, Peace and Hope into Your Relationships: Part I
Reflecting on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message of love, peace, and hope in his “I Have A Dream” speech, I’ve realized that we need these reflected in our lives every single day.
I’m not going to lie: This week has been very hard for me. After my partner and I broke up this weekend, I struggled to think about how I could incorporate love, peace, and hope after such a traumatic moment in my life. But after awhile, I realized that this is such a perfect message for me and really, for everyone, to create love, embody peace, and be hopeful for the future.
Love
Creating love in your relationship is probably the easiest for people. This is about building intimacy, giving kisses and hugs, engaging in sex, and embracing the person for who they are in your life. Love is reflected in the things you do and the things you say. Love is in the aura you have around you, what gets people to love you, and gets people to embrace you.
This week, I saw the love my friends had for me and I realized how the support system I had was carried in a love so deep that it’s unbreakable. That creation of love that we’ve started is so solid that it literally has carried me through my sadness, grief, and loss. I’ve had my ups and downs this week, but that kind of love is everlasting and that is how I’ve been able to embody peace.
Peace
Embodying peace is being able to be one with yourself, despite the chaos and stress in your life. So the question is: How do you gain your peace? I gain my peace by using forgiveness (for other people and for myself), engaging in breath-work, meditation and doing yoga. I’ve had to do a lot of that lately. Maybe your peace comes after you say, “fuck everything!” or after yelling or screaming or punching a pillow. I’ve done a lot of that, too.
In a relationship, embodying peace is not only loving the people you’re in relationships with, but also embracing their blessings and faults. If you don’t embrace those, you can’t be at peace within yourself. Believe me, I’ve tried. As soon as you start creating a sustainable, peaceful situation in your body, that’s when you can start to be hopeful.
Hope
Being hopeful for the future is a bit hard for me, at this particular moment in time, but I know I’ve been in this situation before, so that gives me hope already. Since I’ll never shut myself off from love or keep myself from embodying peace, I know that hope is always on the way. MLK had hope for the future and I’m reminded of that every single day when I talk to my friends, when I visit my social media or when I’m teaching. My relationships with all those people give me hope for the future. Your relationships with the people in your life should give you hope for the future, as well, as long as they are positive forces in your life. Hope is what we have to hang on to. Hope is what pulls us forward in the right direction.
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