Marium Ihsan

Music, in its infinite wonder, feeds the emotional tree of the soul. It is undeniably the most abstract of the arts because of how closely it is related to the dimensions of time and space. Susan Buck-Morss in her book, The Origin of Negative Dialectics, states: “Music unfolds in a continuous, transitory present.” What's interesting to note is that human life, too, unfolds in a transitory present, and the allure of music lies in the fact that it is an embodiment of the rhythm of time in itself. Its melodic ebb and flow that blossoms into marvelous symphonies is similar to the rhythmic alternations between birth, growth, decay, and death. 

The attraction to music is derived from the familiarity that is inherent within music. Music, in many ways, is a simulation of our lives. Once it commences, it is obligated to go further, to grow and develop, to become something new. Just like that, unlike other forms of art, music directly embodies the passage of life. As time progresses, one is invited to transcend the previous stages of development, to grow, and doing so gives meaning to one's life. Every song represents life, every song is a singular entity like an individual themself, and every song has a lifespan of its own. From the moment it begins, to the climactic chorus, to the turning points in the bridge, every song has a course of life of its own. A listener draws a sense of familiarity to their own life by the emotions felt and observed through the music. 

Love and music are two lights of one candle. Throughout history, countless songs have been written about love simply because of how familiar a feeling it is, but also because of how powerful an emotion it can be. Human beings are governed and driven by their emotions; the feeling of being loved, being in love, or loving something is one that most yearn for. Music portrays that feeling, but through melodies, rhythms, tunes, and lyrics. 

A study titled "Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters" states a phenomenon, known in literature as the mere exposure effect, which suggests that familiarity might play an important role in the emotional engagement of listeners with the music. Love is more than a familiar feeling, it is a feeling felt by all, even the most isolated of individuals. Whether it be love for self, platonic, romantic, familial, or passion for a celebrity, it is known to most. The reason most music centers itself around the foundation of love is because of how easy it is for listeners to connect and emotionally attach themselves to songs that mirror instances within their own lives. The similarity between “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong, “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston, and “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift is that they were created about love and acting out of love. They resonate with people because of how familiar these feelings may be or because of how hopelessly one longs for this kind of love. 

“Spiegel im Spiegel.” “Mirror in the Mirror.” A popular composition by Estonian composer Arvo Part. The Arvo Part Centre describes it by saying that “the structure of the piece follows a strict formula, where no note is left to chance. The title directly reflects what is happening in the music: each ascending melodic line is followed by a descending mirror phrase. Initially, the melody consists of only two notes, with another note being added with each of the following phrases, thus creating a seemingly endless continuum.” Even though the 10-minute-long composition has no lyrics, it undoubtedly invokes overwhelming emotions when listened to. Some may ask, what does this have to do with love and music? The piece was written by Part as he departed from his homeland of Estonia and is one of his last compositions. That leads me to believe that it is inherently and evidently about love. The love that he felt for his home, the sense of belonging and warmth he felt, and how dearly he loved the place he called home. It is because of how immensely he loved his home that the loss of it was all the more painful. 

It is noteworthy that, without the use of words, this story unwinds itself into a tale of love turning to pain turning to a forgotten love hidden in memories of childhood. Arvo Part, in this composition, tells a story of love for his home through the minimalistic approach of using only a violin and a piano. However, the purpose of the composition isn't just to emphasize his attachment to his homeland but to illustrate the unimaginable pain of losing this home. A pain that when expressed through mere words would be watered down, its extremity not portrayed in the same manner it could have been through the mixing of two melancholic instruments. Love is magic because it is more than a sweet feeling of warmth and comfort, and music is magical because it speaks of pain as much as it does of warmth. Just as in the case of “Spiegel im Spiegel,” music and love intertwine to speak what cannot be spoken through alphabets. 

Another brilliant example of the togetherness of love and music is a Punjabi folk song, “Paar Chanaa De,” meaning “Across the River Chenab.” The song portrays the story of Soni, the daughter of a potter. A trader visits the pottery shop and falls in love with Soni. While the tale seems like an unfortunate ending for ill-fated lovers, it stresses how they are united in the afterlife, thus able to freely express their love for each other. What's special about this folk song is that the listener cannot help but feel tearful yet at the same time smile at how timeless this seemingly “tragic” love was; in death, they found eternal love. 

This story would be great for any novel, perhaps a best-selling Pakistani spin-off of Romeo and Juliet. However, there is a reason it is expressed as a song and not as a book. A book does not consider the impact the incorporation of a sitar can have on the mood of the song, nor does a book consider how stretching notes can convey the longing desperation of two lovers struggling to stay afloat as currents carry them to their demise. A book works on its own, it works on the linguistic power of the author. Music never acts alone; it is a harmonious mix of emotive lyrics, the tone of voice, and the inclusion of subsequent instruments. That is partially why music evokes where words cannot and moves in ways words will never be able to.

“Spiegel im Spiegel” and “Across the River Chenab” are polar opposite in their messages, one a minimalist composition, the other a traditional folk song about star-crossed lovers. However, what correlates them is that they are key representatives of the boundless power of music. Both songs are based upon love, whether it be the feelings attached to a place you call home or the struggle to be with someone you love. They are stories that grow and develop, and as they do the listener tears up, feels nostalgic reminiscing about similar instances within their own lives, and eventually smiles because they overcame this journey. They are symbolic of themes of love but also of pain, both all-consuming emotions where the listener feels what the musician wishes to portray. 

The reason why musicians across the world choose to write and create music about love is that it is a feeling so great that it can often not be described through just words. It tells a story that requires one to listen and it demands that you feel exactly what the musician felt while writing that song or composing that melody. In doing so, you imagine yourself in another world far from yours, unique to each song and in a world governed by this emotional state. Its allure lies in how familiar a feeling it can be but also in how magical it can be in all its power. Whether it be a song about overcoming obstacles and coming to love oneself, whether it be about the love you have for someone else or relating to the love and feeling attached to something you hold dear to your heart, these are all instances and emotions that are felt by most people throughout their lives. 

Emotions of love flow just like music; they change with time, undergoing change and shaping the narrative of our stories, but they also come to an end, sometimes an end that gives us comfort and sometimes an unpleasant, tragic ending. Love, like music, is about sincerity, clarity, and being pure in nature. Perhaps, these similar qualities are what relate love and music so closely that love songs have become a genre of music on their own, or perhaps the similarities between the two make writing, composing, and creating messages of love easier to deliver with music. Music provides assurance that the listener will in some shape or form be able to understand and associate themselves with the piece, making them come back to it time and time again, founding a relationship between the artist, the art, and the listener. A relationship of love, out of love, about being in love.

It is because these messages of love are so understandable and so relatable that this relationship between love and music is so comprehensive. 

I find myself asking this question: If love were not magical, would music still be magic? 

Olivier, Bert. “What's the Connection between Music and Love?” Thought Leader, Mail & Guardian Media Ltd, 18 Oct. 2010, https://thoughtleader.co.za/music-and-love/. 

Pereira, Carlos Silva, et al. “Music and Emotions in The Brain: Familiarity Matters.” PLOS ONE - Public Library of Science, 16 Nov. 2011, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0027241. 

“Paar Chanaa De Lyrics Translation, Meaning, & Story.” GAANA GIRL, 9 Nov. 2016, https://gaanagirl.wordpress.com/2016/09/19/paar-chanaa-de-lyrics-translation-meaning-story/.     

"Spiegel Im Spiegel." Arvo Pärt Centre, n.d., https://www.arvopart.ee/en/arvo-part/work/544/.                                                   

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Marium Ihsan explores the timeless relationship between love and music.

Exploring the Magic of Love in Music

Sylvie Green

Healthy love does not always come easily, but it begins with being aware of how we impact others, how we impact ourselves, and how others impact us. 

Love holds so much power. It inspires us, motivates us, frightens us, enlightens us, brings us together, and sets us apart. 

Healthy love does not always come easily, but it begins with being aware of how we impact others, how we impact ourselves, and how others impact us. When we can identify when loving others is getting in the way of loving ourselves, or vice versa, we can repair and improve ourselves and our relationships; we can feel more genuine love. 

Each individual gives and receives love in different ways and, therefore, defines love differently. To me, loving myself means prioritizing myself, forgiving myself, and being content with who I am. Loving others is a complex feeling of affection and care for a person. I show my love directly: through physical closeness, offering my support, and reminding people that I love them. But many people don’t show their love in these same ways. In order to love someone healthily, it is important to understand that we each do so in our own unique ways. Nevertheless, being able to successfully love both yourself and others requires a balance between being both selfish and selfless. 

We have probably all heard the expression, “you must love yourself before you can love others.” This claim diverges from the significance of our individuality and distinct ways of loving. However, there is some truth in it. It is certainly easier to love others when you love yourself because you are more likely to believe that people love you. When I don’t love myself, I tend to lose trust in the people who claim to love me, which can make it difficult to love those people.

With a sense of confidence that you are loved comes less need for others’ approval. The desperate desire for validation can alter one’s judgment of who they love and who they should love. Validation can happen in different ways. If someone is insecure and lonely, they may think that they love someone just because they are receiving the type of attention they crave. Loving oneself can decrease the potential for this type of false love.

When I want validation, I sometimes think I need to change myself to receive it. I put on a mask in order to impress those around me and, by acting unlike my true self, I eliminate an opportunity for genuine love. For example, I’ll choose an outfit I am less comfortable in or refrain from making jokes I think are funny. When someone loves me while I’m not being myself, they are not truly loving me. Once I recognize this, the relationship’s value is lost. 

Another way a lack of self-love can undermine healthy relationships happens when insecurity and self-hatred promote a need to distance oneself from others in fear of judgment or critique. Or, in my case, sometimes I forget to be there for others because I am so caught up in trying to remember how to love myself. This can be just as harmful as the opposite, which is why we must consider both our own needs and the needs of others. 

While loving ourselves makes it easier to love others, loving others can enable us to love ourselves. Connecting with people is an amazing feeling. In my experience, finding someone whom I genuinely care about and who makes me happy has reminded me of my own great qualities that allow me to build those relationships. For example, when I listen and give advice to someone I love, I am reminded of my empathy and kindness. When I laugh and spend time with someone I love, I am reminded of my sense of humor and love for fun. Receiving love reminds us that we are lovable. 

However, as connected as receiving love and self-love are, it is important to retain some separation as well. It is dangerous when you depend on love from others to feel loved. Once, I loved someone so much that their love helped me to love myself. But when I lost that person, I lost my self-love. I blamed myself for the loss and assumed that I had done something wrong. I decided that I had never been good enough for the person. No matter the relationship, we should strive to love ourselves in isolation from those we love; people will always come and go, and if we can’t grow without them, we will never grow. 

Just as we must love ourselves regardless of who loves us, we must love ourselves independently of whom we love. Loving others does not always help us to love ourselves. Sometimes we sacrifice our self-love because we are blinded by our love for toxic people. When we love someone, we sometimes justify their dishonesty, disrespect, or even violence, and therefore believe that we are the problem. Love can blur our perception of our relationships, ultimately blurring our perception of ourselves. When I am struggling with self-love, my flaws are all I can see. But I have found that the flaws of others are too often concealed by my love for them. Although it is important to forgive those we love, it is critical that we prioritize ourselves in relationships. If attempting to stop loving someone is what it takes to continue to love ourselves, it is what we must do. 

The relationship between loving others and loving ourselves is complicated and inextricably intertwined. Building our own inner strength is key to success in all aspects of life but especially in creating and maintaining healthy relationships. Self-love must come first because it enables us to see clearly how our relationships affect us. But too much self-love can destroy. As with so many things, we must strike a balance.

In a KidSpirit Big Question article, teen writer Sylvie Green examines how self-love, inner strength, and resilience are essential to positive relationships.

What Is the Relationship between Loving Yourself and Loving Others?

Izzy Weitzman

One of the basic facts of love is that it is personal, and means a slightly different thing each time it occurs. 

There are common themes to love, such as shared interests, extended time together, and some intangible spark. Groundhog Day explores this idea of the variation and iteration of love through its unique lens, that lens being a repeated day. It is a good film, but no one part of it makes it good. The quality of the movie is consistently found in each aspect of the filmmaking process. 

The basic idea of Groundhog Day is that Phil, a weatherman played by Bill Murray, relives the same day over and over again, which happens to be Groundhog Day. Phil’s job on Groundhog Day is to travel to a town called Punxsutawney, home of a famous groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil.  Groundhog Day is an American holiday during which people travel to see what happens when a particular groundhog leaves their burrow on February 2nd. If the groundhog sees their shadow, there will be another six weeks of winter. If they don’t, there will be an early spring. Of the days Phil spends on February 2nd, many of them are devoted to wooing Rita, played by Andie MacDowell, a new producer at the television station Phil works for. Phil can remember the events of each day, while Rita, along with everyone else in the world, cannot. As Phil spends more and more time near Rita, his affection for her grows. Groundhog Day is about Phil’s learning how to be an improved person, specifically one Rita is interested in. The repeated day setup is one of the largest factors contributing to the sublime awesomeness that is Groundhog Day. Through Phil’s repetition, we get a lens into the multitude of things that can happen in one day, and how they combine to shape one’s experiences. The film seeks to present a complete view of Phil’s time in Punxsutawney, and not to give any one day too much focus. This tells the audience that, while any given day can have importance, no one day can make or break someone’s life, and that, in the grand monotony of life, there will be good days, and there will be bad days, but there will always be another day tomorrow, or in Phil’s case, another today. 

It is in this repeated day structure that the writing quality begins to show through. Here the greatness comes from the continued presence of side characters. For example, there is an old man whose big moment comes toward the end of the film. Rather than appear two minutes before his character is important, the old man is present throughout the movie, just in a background character role when it is not his time. Most of the side characters play similar roles. This creates a close-knit world with many connections for the audience to get lost in. However, at the start of the film, this is not the world Phil wants to live in. He spends a good portion of the opening scene bemoaning his yearly trip. But as Phil’s love for Rita grows, so does his love for the town. It is the omnipresent side characters that foster this growth.

The story of Groundhog Day is in many ways the story of a small town. Even with the parties and whatnot surrounding the groundhog, Punxsutawney is still not wild the way many movies these days are in terms of cinematography. Here, the film leans on the strength of the script and of the cast. The film is not shot to look spectacular, because there is no spectacle. Cinematography is another tool the film uses to create the environment of a small town. Towns don't have flashing lights. They don't have skyscrapers and packed office buildings. They have inns. And bakeries. And the good butcher down the street who always gives you an extra link of sausage because you're such a good customer. It would not make sense for the film to feature dramatic lighting and special effects because there is not supposed to be anything special about Punxsutawney. The filmmakers clearly ended up with exactly what they set out to film. 

Despite the successes of the film, there is one large flaw: part of the story does not hold up. Phil’s main goal throughout the story is Rita. He wants to be with her and spends quite a bit of time trying to become someone she is interested in. The nature of a person, particularly a woman, being someone’s goal in life is frowned upon in the 2020s, and for good reason. Rita’s defining, dynamic characteristic is her relationship to Phil. She is written into the film as the object of Phil’s attention. She is given a full character, but that character does not exist without her relationship with Phil. However, there is some good messaging surrounding this serious flaw. What began as a quest of courtship for Phil ends as a quest for self-betterment. Phil learns that Rita will be interested in him if he becomes a better person. This is the key lesson: being someone who others will fall in love with is not about trying to be like someone else. It is about being a good person and knowing that other people will value that quality. The nature of romantic relationships does give the film a little extra push toward showing this message, but the objectification used to get there detracts from the quality of the film as a whole.

Groundhog Day is a stellar film about love and self-improvement. It is short by today’s standards, coming in at about an hour and 45 minutes. It does not have the bells and whistles associated with the blockbuster hits of today, but its great writing and great cast provide all the spectacle the audience needs. The one problem is the position of Rita as a trophy and not a person, though Phil’s focus is not as problematic throughout the film. I give Groundhog Day 4.5 out of 5 stars and recommend it to anyone with Amazon Video and four dollars. This film has some heavy stuff in it, including a few suicidal moments, so it might not be great for young kids. Its core premise is strong, and it doesn't need a theater’s big screen to make the audience feel something.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Izzy Weitzman explores the classic comedy Groundhog Day. 

The Perfect (Groundhog) Day

Mac Fabens

Each friend of mine is someone with a quality I admire and wish I had.

Six of us had crammed into a tent meant for three, partly because there was only enough room for one tent on the site, but also because if we all went in one tent, maybe our combined body heat would dry out our sleeping bags. 

Gideon tried to convince everyone that hippophobia was indeed real, that he had not made it up (he had), that it meant he was afraid of corners and should therefore be given one of the middle spots in the tent. Out of the four others in the tent, I was the only one who seemed to not be outraged by his claim that he had hippophobia, possibly because I had already been subjected to a corner spot and had nothing to lose from his quest for a better position.

Most six-person tents I’d been in were fun, like one big slumber party — but this one was just full of 11-year-old boys arguing over whether or not this new word was made up. This pointless debate, coupled with the cold, rainy weather we had been having on our seven-day trip, meant nobody was in the mood to negotiate. 

Suddenly, help appeared in the form of one of the staff bringing us a big bucket of food. The argument was quelled as we all devoured our panickans of mac and cheese, but soon a new problem would arise — someone would have to spend an obnoxious amount of time outside in the freezing rain cleaning the big bucket. As everyone listed off reasons why they shouldn’t be the one to do it and subsequently picked someone else to wash it, I thought of my staff the year prior telling me that we were all a team and had to do things ourselves, without letting selfishness get the best of us. I realized that if I simply volunteered to do the bucket, the atmosphere in the tent would grow much less fierce. Sitting in the rain alone cleaning the bucket sounds sad, and maybe it was, but it also marked an internalization of that lesson I had been taught the year prior. Volunteering to clean the bucket marked a new value being formed for me.

Once I became staff and observed the shenanigans that staff get up to, I realized that having teenage boys teaching me my core values each summer was probably a dangerous gamble, but I think it worked out. I was taught to do my part in a group, not to complain, and to do a job thoroughly. Not only did I learn valuable lessons at camp, but I also picked up the good parts from the people around me, and strove to be as unique and kind as each person at camp was. I still think about my role models from camp, like my friend Archie, a counselor on one of my trips who was always smiling and only ever got mad once.

This year at camp I was a counselor for the first time. After nine years of looking up to my staff, I was finally a staff member. The biggest change is that instead of looking up to someone, you have to always keep in mind that there are several children looking up to you. Having people looking up to you is tricky to navigate — there were countless times when I wanted to put off my responsibility and just have time to myself but realized that had a younger me seen my staff ignore me, I would have felt like a task to watch over (which honestly, I’m sure I was). Having the responsibility of teaching others placed on me made me appreciate those who taught me and realize that it was my job to pass on the lessons they had taught me.

The people at camp taught me important lessons, but that was only two months out of the year; I have my role models at home — in other words, my friends. Friends are, in essence, role models. Each friend of mine is someone with a quality I admire and wish I had. At camp, I was taught lessons by my friends and staff and noticed the lack of that teaching in my peers when I came home each year. I slowly realized that when I thought to myself “that person wouldn’t survive one day at camp,” I was really just observing that they weren’t surrounded by the same people that I was growing up.

In ninth grade, Ali, my friend and classmate since seventh grade, grew tired of our other friend Manny not having a computer to play games with our circle of friends, so he organized us all to buy each part and build a computer for Manny. Ali’s unwarranted kindness is something I always think about and replicate when given the option of doing something kind. 

My first ever friend at a new school, Danny, never gets angry at people, he never makes anyone feel bad for something they did. Even when he’s in a bad mood, or has been treated unjustly, he doesn’t yell at people. Because of him, I avoid blaming or acting petty in arguments.

When I need motivation to continue studying for a test or edit an essay that I’ve been putting off, I think of the friends or acquaintances I have that I’ve seen work hard, and how I want to work hard like they do. That inspiration powers me through to the end.

The people around us are the ones that shape us into who we become, be it camp counselors, friends, or parents. It’s important to pay attention to what makes each person unique because everyone has a quality worth adopting. And the idea of people looking up to you too goes farther than just being a camp counselor. In the same way, I’ve been raised and influenced by my friends, they are being influenced by me. Each person holds more influence than they realize, more power to change someone for the better. Realizing this is just another driver to keep me on my best behavior — because, in the end, my goal is to influence people with the best qualities I have and leave out the bad ones.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Mac Fabens shares how meaningful friendships have shaped him.

Who Raised Me

Keesha Joseph

I grew up in a pretty average household with a more or less functional family. My mother showered me with a touch of her love every day, while my father — although a ghostly figure — tried his best to meet my basic needs. 

Where I come from, the privilege of having two caring parents is beyond imaginable. I navigated life by surviving on this emotional and practical love while bearing the weight that it carried: the weight of its expectations.

Love, as we know it, is as hard a topic as death. From a young age, I was taught that Jesus gave us his love at the price of his life. I wondered, would I have to continue sacrificing myself to reach such a level of greatness? In the past, I severed the threads of my heart for the love of others — only to receive a morsel of it back. I threw away all vanity in hopes of gaining the love and attention I was so accustomed to receiving. This is the type of love encouraged in Haiti: jealous love. A love that sucks the compassion out of relationships and leaves only the bitter taste of keeping a crooked visage.  

It’s hard not to be skeptical of love without thinking of ulterior motives, but unfortunately, that’s what it has come to be. In keeping with my faith, I’ve tried showing as much care in my relationships as I could. My motive was to keep with the Golden Rule and do unto others as I would have them done to me. I wanted no one to envy me, nor did I want to envy another, because jealous love was the kind of love that got you cursed — or worse, killed. In the end, my culture had forced me to fight against its meaning of love; against the associated greed that clouded the mind with hate.

This realization threw me into a tangent of finding the answer to my question: What is love? Despite hearing countless songs about this topic, the answer is still very subjective. After thinking about past experiences and linking these thoughts to my present values, I came up with an immediate response. When I force myself to think of what love means to me, I imagine golden wings sprouting from my back and trapping me in the warm embrace of the words: self-love.

Self-love can mean different things to anybody. To me, it is the poison and the antidote. We usually think of love as either giving or receiving from others, but true love might come from inside. Over the past few years, my mind and heart have been playing a game of tug-o-war. Against my culture, my heart desires to be selfish for itself, while my brain remains orthodox in keeping appearances for the love of others. Why not love myself enough to break free from these chains tying me down with this country? If only it were that simple. 

The Bible can only give so much information about God’s love and life’s values for us. It nurtures our soul, yet it can’t control our thoughts. My desire to find true happiness is linked with this self-love, yet I don’t allow myself the pleasure of feeling its embrace. I let it shadow over me long enough before it can grip me by its teeth. I admit I’m afraid of love — both internally and externally. It’s something I’ve had to face for a while now. I’ve learned to be cautious with whom I give my love. I’ve seen and heard the dangers of jealous love, the ugliness of a broken friendship, and the instability of a marriage. Why is love the center of conflict yet the solution to most? 

My issue lies in the expectations placed in terms of achieving perfection. Self-love and perfection are like fish and land; one dies while the other still lives. Keeping on airs is just as hard as trying to break out of it. Many children in Haiti feel that burden as well. Jealous love has made us hate the way we involuntarily think about ourselves and others. We tiptoe on the thread of betterness to thrive for something new. Changing this culture and the way love has developed is a must. Religion isn’t guiding these morals anymore, and parents aren’t always ready to provide the proper compassion, which is why learning how to love yourself clears the path for a simpler life. 

Love is about how we choose to view the world, ourselves, and others. With the right mindset, we can overcome these insecurities and embark on a journey of trust and recovery. At least, that is what I hope to find in my journey of self-love. I hope I can continue on the straight path toward a greater purpose of self-fulfillment and fully envelop myself in the coat of love. 

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Keesha Joseph explores the people and ideas that have shaped her view of love in her homeland of Haiti. 

The Grip of Jealous Love

Angeles Sofia Godoy Santos

When talking about giving and helping, we are not just referring to material things, but also love, empathy, solidarity, and, above all, humanity. 

Many people may think that we can make big changes with big actions, but the truth is, by doing something for others, no matter how small, we are improving every little corner of our world. 

Feeling in your mind that your world or life is collapsing can change everything around you. One year ago I had a difficult experience in my life, to be exact, with my mental health. There were days when I did not find meaning in my life and long nights when I did not know what I was supposed to do with myself, overthinking until sunrise about what was wrong with me and why. I felt scared and alone all the time. I could not find a purpose in my life, and one day, on a hot afternoon, I thought…if I am just existing and feeling bad about myself every single day, what am I still doing here? Am I good at doing something? At that moment, I started crying without consolation, with suicidal thoughts. 

I have gotten through this situation thanks to the desire to help others. I had bad days where I just wanted to leave it all behind and give up, but one day I participated in a workshop about depression, one of a few that existed during the quarantine. While I was in that meeting, I realized that I was not alone, that there were many young people like me, going through the same or even something worse. Seeing mental health issues as something most people don't care about, while also realizing that I could not live fully because of my own, led me to the idea of creating a project about mental health so I could have the opportunity to help others. It was that night when I decided to do something to change young people’s lives and also mine. 

I am sure that with this project we are going to make positive changes in young people’s lives. The name of this project is "SanaMente," and it has two meanings. The first one is "heal the mind" and the other is "live healthy." With this project, we want to help young people who are suffering from mental problems like anxiety, depression, stress, and others. All of these can be addressed with many activities. In these activities, they will be able to find some useful tools so that they will be able to handle their emotions in a better way. My project aims to help young people through free workshops and support groups with medical professionals so they can achieve well-being, prevent mental illness, and eradicate the stigma of discrimination. We are creating, step-by-step, a safe space, where every young person can find tools to take care of their emotions.

Life is not perfect, but it is beautiful when you want to help and even more beautiful when you do. As I said at the beginning, we all have different perspectives about what it means to give and help, but, for me, it means feeling pleasure by doing something good for others without expecting something in return. But whether you like it or not, we always get something, not necessarily something material but rather knowledge, personal growth, and more. With this little idea of doing a project, I learned a lot of things, but especially I got my salvation. Thanks to the wish of helping others, I found again the purpose in my life, and I hope that other people also find it by giving and helping so that we can all have the opportunity to improve every little corner of our world.  

In a KidSpirit Helping Hands article, teen writer Sofia Godoy shares how helping others got her through a difficult time.

The Pleasure of Giving and Helping

Nargis Kachrumathur

bare feet, tapping a shared rhythm, beating
hearts thudding to the harmony of sounds:
booming music, swishing ghagras, fleeting
voices heard in the lilt of the melody.

is this what it means to be in love? this
irreplaceable tandem of dancing,
the wheel of colors and strangers going
round and a tight knot of passion massing,

right in the centre of my body, it
turns as i do, two steps forward, then two
steps back. a spin here, then forward again
why do i feel this way? would if i knew.

i don’t know i’m tired, until i stop,
so powerful is the hold of that knot.

* In India, in the state of Gujarat, the religious festival called Navratri can be translated into "nine nights," when people get together to do Garba — a traditional dance form. Navratri marks the advent of the goddess Durga on Earth, who fought against and killed a demon king. She had nine different avatars, which is why nine nights of Garba are celebrated to honor and worship her.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Nargis Kachrumathur evokes love, passion, ritual, dance, and togetherness in celebration of Navratri.

nine nights

Tristin Allen

Throughout the years Christmas was thought to bring joy;
Much like the people that would be together:
But now it is celebrated by those who only want a toy;
And how it would make some feel lonely forever.

By the Lord shall ye be led,
From those who may lead thou dismayed
For Christmas may be celebrated with a friend
And who will be with you till the end of day.

For the right one can warm the heart;
Instead of it being broken,
Can also bring together what once was apart;
And nothing is left unspoken.

The tales of friends throughout history,
Just like the gifts in the morn;
Leaves everything a mystery,
To be enjoyed and worn.

The holidays and friends are a good mix,
Just like jolly Saint Nick and Christ;
All that is required is you to take the trips,
To be with friends and eat food that's spiced

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Tristin Allen pens an ode to the spirit of Christmas.

Christmas and the Things It Brings

Dasol Kim

Philautia, the hardest type of love.
Am I being selfish? Do I deserve to have it? 

My mirror tells me to hate what I see,
My mind is slowly convinced but unwilling to admit.

I have no control over the voice inside my head,
She’s the creator of my insecurities.

“You’re not worthy of confidence,
Focus on fixing your impurities.”

When can I stop living like this?
I want to be free. 

But doubt and warriness surround me because
Philautia, the hardest type of love for me. 

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Dasol Kim takes on the difficult task of loving and accepting ourselves. 

Philautia

Fifi Wang

The way you perceive affection is never a flaw on your part but rather something established early in your childhood.

The first person you dated after college took too long to unpack after moving in and you thought to yourself that it was all a metaphor for the emotional baggage they couldn’t put down, and when you saw their shoes by the door, it felt like they were waiting to leave you anytime soon. 

Your last partner bought you gifts wherever they went but what you wanted was to spend a Christmas together instead of another postcard in the mail, and when they asked you for an expensive car last month you saw it as foreshadowing that they would later travel far away and never come back. It’s the same story over and over again – you meet someone and you fall in love and they say they love you too, but you’re certain that they don’t and you break up with them and sometimes they break up with you and it doesn’t matter in the end and then you meet someone new again. The cycle never ends. It gets hard to forgive yourself. 

Over time, your relationships wear you down. You question if you are capable of being loved in the first place, and if you really were, why couldn’t you do anything right? The search for emotional closure turns into a burden, as you wish that you were someone else, someone who was easily loved. You cannot forgive yourself. 

But the way you perceive affection is never a flaw on your part but rather something established early in your childhood. In the attachment theory proposed by British psychiatrist John Bowlby in 1958, a child’s attachment to their primary caretakers are part of an evolutionary process that encodes behaviors later in life. Children who are closer with their mothers generally perform better as adults. The two main determinants of security are the opportunity for attachment and quality caregiving– in other words, whether or not a caretaker’s presence is consistent enough for a child to attach to and whether or not they are responsible enough to depend on. In the 1970s, psychologist Mary Ainsworth conducted a study in which 12-to-18-month-old children were briefly separated from their mothers. Based on their reactions, Ainsworth categorized attachment into four types: secure, ambivalent-insecure, avoidant-insecure, and disorganized-insecure. 

1. In a secure attachment, the child shows distress when taken away from their mother, and expresses immediate joy when reunited. This implies that the child trusts their caretaker completely, understanding that any past fears would be eradicated in presence of the people they trust. When children with secure attachments grow up, they feel confident that their romantic partners will be there when they need them, seeking consistent relationships and communicating their thoughts and feelings with ease. 

2. In an ambivalent-insecure attachment the child becomes extremely distressed when taken away from their mother, and the distress continues even after reuniting. A result of caretakers not being available when the child needs them, the behavior of continuous anxiousness is interpreted as the child wanting more confirmation than their caretaker returning, as they know that they could leave again anytime. In a relationship, adults with this type of attachment seek more and more affirmations of security, such as wanting to be with their partners 24/7 or over-thinking themselves into believing that their partners do not love them based on small, insignificant gestures, and becoming frustrated when their wants are not met. Behaviors like this often lead to a breakup. 

3. In an avoidant-insecure attachment, the child shows no distress when taken away from their mother, and expresses no interest when reunited, appearing to have no preference between their mother and a complete stranger. This is often the result of child neglect or child abuse, in which a child is punished for seeking help from a caretaker, leading them to believe that their emotions are their own to deal with. Children like this appear indifferent in relationships. They feel uncomfortable trusting or depending on others and tend to be alarmed when their partners grow too close to them. 

4. A disorganized-insecure attachment is a mix of the other three. The child sees their caretaker as both a source of comfort and fear, because of the latter’s highly inconsistent degrees of care. 

As a result of different attachment types, relationships fail through mismatched ideals of what a loving relationship is. People accuse each other of over- and under-loving, people who inherited anxiety from their childhood impose that uneasiness onto others, and people with neglectful parents become neglectful toward their partners. Over time, even those with secure attachments become affected, leading to a vicious cycle of more and more insecurely attached individuals in the world. Because it’s hard to forgive yourself. 

To complicate matters more, people seek different things even within the same attachment type. The Five Love Languages, first published by Dr. Gary Chapman in 1992, states that most relationships fail because people often don’t understand their partner’s needs, which they assume are identical to their own, but most likely are not. In further analysis, it has been found that a person’s love language is often what they lacked as a child, ranging from words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service, to receiving gifts. 

1. People whose love language is words of affirmation want compliments either in text or spoken out loud, such as good morning messages, love notes, and comments on their outfits. They most likely were not praised often as a child, for reasons like grades and behavior. 

2. Quality time is best shown with undivided attention, in which the partner physically turns off distractions, such as their phone, and spends time with them. During this period, people with this love language prefer eye contact and affirmation over solutions to the obstacles they are facing. They also believe in quality over quantity of time. The caretakers of these people as children possibly multi-tasked often when taking care of them. 

3. While many interpret physical touch as inherently sexual, the love language leans towards otherwise. Physical touch can be displayed as holding hands, hugging, or massaging. As a child, most people were lovingly touched often, but the ones who were never hugged and patted grow up with the love language of physical touch. 

4. People who desire acts of services are often the ones with packed schedules, and the way to show affection is by helping them out with small chores, such as doing dishes and buying groceries. As a child, these people probably managed a lot on their own and believed that they had to complete every task alone while hoping someone would come by and unload this burden. 

5. Receiving gifts is not about the price of the gifts, but rather, the detail that the giver spent time and effort on finding something that appeals to them. Individuals with this love language enjoy the idea that their partner has thought of them, and likely used to believe that they were not worthy of gifts as a child. 

When people don’t understand their partner’s love language, it leads to a relationship where both people feel like they’re giving more, without realizing that, regardless of how much love they put on the table, their partner does not receive anything because of the mismatch in love languages. This isn’t to say, however, that relationships work better with two people using the same love language – any combination can work just as well, as long as each person takes the initiative to understand the form of love their partner wants. Even still, it’s hard to forgive yourself.

The coexistence of attachment theory and love languages creates a paradox: people grow up to embody the ways they were treated as a child, yet at the same time crave what they lacked when they were younger. In other words, you only perceive the exact type of love you do not want. You don’t know how to react to the type of love you do want, the type of love that went missing in your life and returned decades too late, and you embody a child and an adult, a victim and an assailant, because, in the end, everything about love is just another form of self-destruction. A person tells their partner in a thousand unspoken acts how much they want them, not knowing that the partner can only hear what is explicitly stated. A person becomes distressed when their partner steps out the door, and the partner screams that they don’t know what more to do and leaves even faster. A child whose caretakers always kept their distance develops an avoidant-insecure attachment, causing them to be distant towards their partner, while desiring to be touched because they were never touched lovingly by their caretakers. The child wants to be touched and leaves when their partner tries to touch them, and as a result, never feels loved. To be uncomfortably touched or uncomfortably not-touched – it’s a dilemma with only wrong choices, two roads equally taken that lead to the same undesired land. 

And the only escape from this cycle is to forgive yourself. Before anything else happens, you forgive yourself, you forgive your past relationships– the ones that shattered you and the ones that almost made it through– you forgive yourself for your childhood and you forgive yourself for seeing your parents’ faces in the mirror. It is so god-forsakenly difficult but in the raised, bloodied fists and wartime cries, you forgive yourself; in the shattering of a wedding-to-be, you forgive yourself; in the solitude of midnight city lights, you forgive yourself. Close your eyes and meet your childlike self in the distortion of time– tell them you’re sorry. Wear a child's skin and run up to your grown body–tell them you forgive them. The only mode to acceptance is to understand that how you react to love is never your fault. To forgive yourself is to forgive your parents and their parents and the parents before them; to forgive yourself is to break the cycle of generational trauma. 

Cherry, Kenda. “What Is Attachment Theory?” Very Well Mind, 17 July 2019, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-attachment-theory-2795337. Accessed 20 September 2021. 

Fraley, R. Chris. “Adult Attachment and Research.” University of Illinois Psychology Department Labs, 2018, http://labs.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/attachment.htm. Accessed 20 September 2021. 

Gordon, Sherri. “What Are the Five Love Languages?” Very Well Mind, 27 June 2019, https://www.verywellmind.com/can-the-five-love-languages-help-your-relationship-478353. Accessed 20 September 2021. 

Vasak, Mallika. “Your Love Language is What You Lack.” Medium, 27 October 2020, https://medium.com/illumination/your-love-language-is-what-you-lack-6f7637982e72. Accessed 20 September 2021.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Fifi Wang explains how self-forgiveness, along with an understanding of childhood attachments and love languages, can help us find love.

Step One: Self-Forgiveness

Levi Ngwenya

Dance, African child, mama is watching 
A proud smile on her elegant face 
Ululating all heard all around 
Dance, child; listen to the African rhythm 
A beat not too slow or too fast
Mama is cheering with the crowd and pride is wavering around her
Feel the beat, child, listen, the drum is booming with celebratory beats
Dance, for your mama is free, she has finally found peace again, dance, child, and lift her spirits 
Feel the atmosphere around you, join the celebration 
The ugly woes that prinkled her have retreated 
You have suffered and cried, now it's time to laugh and dance in joy 
The songs of war have stopped and it's time to celebrate!

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Levi Ngwenya brings to life a joyous celebration of love.

Dance African Child

Ruoxi Zhao

The Farewell, in my opinion, is a story about "love under a lie."

The film tells the story of Billie, the heroine who immigrated to the United States as a child. She is worried about her messy life. She has failed to get a scholarship and is several months behind on rent. Then, she is informed that her grandmother in China has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. To Billie's bewilderment, the whole family is not going to tell Grandma; instead, they make up a big lie, on the pretext of a cousin’s marriage, to have all the families get together to see Grandma for the last time. Although there is a lie in this movie, it represents love, and the hero chooses to overcome the differences between Chinese and Western cultures because of love.

The Chinese title of the movie translates to "Don't Tell Her." The name isn't hard to understand — it means “don't tell Grandma it's terminal cancer.” What we, as viewers, need to understand is the love and difference behind this lie. The Chinese emphasize blood ties, believing that family affection is the root that can never be cut down, no matter where you are. In The Farewell, Billie's grandmother has two sons, one sent to Japan and the other to the US. They have made their homes in foreign countries and have not been reunited in China for 25 years. 

Billie, who moved to the US with her parents when she was six and has lived there for 25 years, has a strong attachment to her grandmother. Billie can’t understand why the family has kept her grandmother's illness a secret. She doesn’t think it is right. In stark contrast, her uncle's family in Japan accepts the concealment. Japan is deeply influenced by Chinese culture, while the US, on the other side of the ocean, is another culture, and this difference between Eastern and Western cultures is thus brought to the table by the director. In the movie, the cultural difference between the East and the West is reflected in that the Eastern culture values a person's emotions more, while the West is more rational and values a person's authenticity and sincerity. The film’s heroine is from the Western culture and believes that she should not hide the illness from her grandmother, while her family is from the Eastern culture, which accepts telling white lies to make her grandmother happy. The different ways of doing things because of their different cultures lead to conflicts.

In the beginning, I thought: in the face of family love, is life collective or individual? For some people, life is seen as individual and independent, but for others, life is collective. The reason why the family chooses to hide the illness is to help Grandma share the mental pressure. It is not a special event in Chinese people's minds to tell an old man what disease he has. When a major disease is detected, our first thought is to not let the old man bear the fear of dying alone at the last moment of his life.

Billie does not understand at the beginning, but then she takes the initiative to help conceal her grandmother’s illness. Behind this change is the power of love and blood.  It is Billie's love and affection for her grandmother that makes her choose to give up the values she has received in the West and follow her parents' values and comfort “her grandmother with lies." When she returns to her Chinese hometown from the US, she feels warmth instead of loneliness, and the noise she could not imagine when she was alone in the US. At the wedding, watching everyone eat and drink, she wonders if others know about Grandma's illness. Some do. Those who know still choose to face happy events with laughter, and those who know will choose to face funerals with crying.

When portraying the funeral, the director presents a meaningful portrait of Confucius, obviously attributing the tradition of "mourning" to "ethics." This is one of the reasons why the film is not so profound. The director puts everything on the table, and a statue and a scene of weeping become the abuse of ethics, while the truth in the tears of the weeping person is ignored.

Love in the movie is not only reflected in white lies, but also in the cross-country love between the protagonist and her grandmother. Billie was brought up by her grandmother when she was young, but her parents soon took her to the US. The two never met again. Time and distance separated them, but the kinship between them did not break. The film starts with granddaughter and grandmother on either side of the ocean, telling each other their trivial daily activities to express their sincere love. Grandma, enthusiastic and persistent, teaches her granddaughter as an older person with many life experiences. In this way, Billie’s knowledge of her grandma also gradually deepens, and the affection between them dissolves their cultural differences so much that, by the end of the movie, Billie is on the streets of New York yelling, "Hey, ha,” just as her grandma shouted when practicing qigong. 

Is it true that Billie truly believes in the efficacy of hiding her grandmother’s health status, an idea that she has never been exposed to before? Not necessarily. I understand her desire to get along with her family, lively and sincere. During her dispute with her father over whether to tell Grandma, Billie is more like an observer. She can feel others through the family relation and emotion. Just like a shot in the last part of the film, when Billie in New York and her family in China are walking on different streets, these people live in different parts of the world, but they experience different things. They accept completely different cultural environments, but, because they are family, they are walking together at that moment. So, I concluded after watching that, in the face of love, life should be collective. Relatives will choose to hide their sadness in order to make Grandma happy.

My rating for this movie is 4.5 out of 5 stars. To conclude, I would like to end with a line from "Come Healing," the film’s theme song: 

“An undivided love, The heart beneath is teaching. 
Come healing of the body, Come healing of the mind.
Love is the cure for all things.”

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Ruoxi Zhao gives her take on the moving film The Farewell.

Love Is the Cure for All Things

Samira Roy

Helping people, whether they are close to me or not, is one of the things I love doing the most. 

It’s an opportunity to show someone or a community how much I love and care for them. The knowledge that I helped someone, or when the love and appreciation are reciprocated, warms my heart and is one of the things that truly makes me feel good. Three acts of love that make me happy are community service, helping my family, and giving advice to the people that come to me. 

Community service is something that warms my heart, especially in Haiti. Knowing I was able to help make a difference for someone who doesn’t have the same opportunities that I have is one of the best feelings. Recently, my close friend started a foundation dedicated to her brother who passed away and who used to love helping our community. Our first project was to raise money to buy school bags and supplies for the kids whose parents or caretakers don’t have the means to buy these supplies for them. We raised enough money to make over 800 kits for pupils in schools from different areas. An event was then hosted to give out these bags and provide some snacks and drinks for the kids that were present. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend this event, but knowing that we were able to help these kids get better supplies and that they were happy to receive them was truly amazing. Helping people who are less fortunate by donating clothes, food, supplies, and helping to make their lives a bit better has a very positive effect on everyone involved, including ourselves. 

My family, especially my little brother and sister, are always in need of some help, whatever the occasion. My brother and I have a bond where I always help him with school, to overcome things, and get things done if needed. As soon as everything goes well, he tells me about it and we laugh about certain things. My little sister is still a toddler, so I’m always doing things with her. I get her food, I help her change into her little outfits, I put on movies for her, and, most of all, I babysit her when our parents are out. These days she’s always around me. Although siblings do get a bit annoying, helping her is something I will never get tired of doing. My grandma is also someone whom I love helping. I love helping her get her mind off stress by going out with her, helping her babysit my cousins, or even driving when she feels like she can’t. I help her with laundry when we’re in the US and help her figure out where to go with the GPS, since sometimes it can be a little confusing, and it’s very easy to get lost.  It is always the little things that matter. 

Giving out advice to friends, family, or anyone who asks for it is equally fulfilling. I am the type of person that loves listening to what someone has to say and helping them in their situation. It shows them how much I care for them. My friends are usually the ones who come to me for advice. I don’t always know what to say to help them, but words usually just come to mind and suddenly I do help them. This doesn’t mean I’m always giving out advice; sometimes I can see that the only way to help this person is to hold their hand, give them a hug, take a walk with them, or reassure them that I’m right here. If anyone were to ask one of my loved ones if I am a helpful person, I am 99.9 percent sure they would say that I am. I can’t think of one time that it didn’t make me feel good to know that I helped them feel better. As an example, I have a friend who doesn’t have good memories of her birthdays. This year she asked me what to do in a certain situation around her birthday. I told her what I thought was the right thing to say, and I stayed with her all night until the afternoon on the next day. I helped her get over her sadness, and made sure she had a very special day. Seeing her happy was the only thing that I focused on, and I succeeded. 

Being a helping hand to people I care about is a love language that I don’t know if many people have. It’s a passion and a joy to do - volunteering, helping new students adjust to the class, giving out advice, giving some type of reassurance, and just making people’s lives even a little bit easier. 

In a KidSpirit Helping Hands article, teen writer Samira Roy explains how offering her friends and family service, advice, and compassion has changed her life for the better.

Love and Helping Hands

Oryna Bielikova

Love will turn everyone’s head,
Love is like a book that no one has read.
This wonderful feeling is brighter than sunshine 
And people are saying, “Dear, you will be mine.”
The lovers always care about each other,
So they’ll never trade their sweetheart for another.
It’s cute to see boys calling their beloved “darling,”
Even their hugs are warming.

I will think a lot tonight.
Watching their relationship is charming, right?
But why don’t you feel this miracle by yourself?
Hey, you, get off the shelf!
Go outside and see that sky is blue,
Pay attention to awesome people surrounding you.
You are not alone, so don’t be upset — 
Maybe the love of your life is the person you met,
So there’s no reason to be sad!

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Oryna Bielikova celebrates love.

What a Feeling!

Satya Shaw

There’s something everyone must come to realize at some point in their lives, though they might never acknowledge it. Love isn’t something you feel in one singular moment — it’s a collection of memories from the time you’re born to the day you die. 

Love is imbued in the smallest actions, from the most meaningful ones to the funniest. These actions can range anywhere from giving a gift, to truly being there for someone in their time of need, to even just laughing with someone. Nobody’s life is perfect or easy, but finding these moments of love can help make each day a little bit brighter.

Sitting in my room one late, COVID-locked-down night, I noticed something.  Perched on a shelf above my desk, next to an overturned photo and a piece of art from sixth grade, sits a blue and gold award. I won a KidSpirit Award in 2020 for my Interfaith Connections piece, “To Be Me.” While it may not seem like much, this award means so much to me. On that night, I reflected for the first time on the love that surrounds me and I noticed the impact it has had on how I view the world and the way I interact with people I love. It was a very personal piece that took a lot of self-reflection to write. It fills me with love to know that something I poured my heart into resonated with so many people. I’ll be honest: looking back, that piece isn’t my favorite of those I’ve written. But that doesn’t change the fact that no matter my feelings now, I still made myself vulnerable and shared part of myself. I hope that people can feel the love I put into that piece and feel inspired to share parts of themselves with the people they care about.

The award serves as a physical reminder of what can come from being open with people. Going one step further, I think one of the greatest acts of love — both platonic and romantic — is truly being there for and listening to the people who share with you. People often lean on the Golden Rule to “treat others the way you want to be treated,” but I always try to push my friends and family to follow the Platinum Rule, to “treat others the way they want to be treated.” I say this because everybody is different. Some people benefit from talking through their problems while others simply need someone to be with them and care. Not every person’s wants and needs will align, and people tend to forget that. Sometimes people don’t need advice, they just need someone to listen. 

COVID highlighted this in many ways. I don’t know how to describe this past year or so in words that everyone hasn’t heard time after time, but I know that it affected many people’s mental health negatively, including mine. I can’t describe exactly how it made me feel to be with the same people in the same place month after month, but I know that neither I nor my emotions had anywhere to go. More anxieties piled up every day, about school, friends, family, appearances, and pretty much everything else you can think of. There was no escape, or so I thought until I opened up to my friends. Not only did they feel the same, but they also gave me so much love just by simply listening to me and helping me see that I wasn’t alone. It’s these moments that show the power love has over how we interact with the world.

Love, however, isn’t always deeply personal. Some acts of love are small and hilarious. One thing I’ll never forget is the time my dad surprised my mom with a Bollywood poster with her face photoshopped onto it. One of my mom’s favorite things to do while ironing clothes is to watch Bollywood movies. Knowing this, my dad spent hours photoshopping her face and other family members’ faces onto Bollywood posters as a gift to her. It doesn’t seem like much  — after all, it’s just a little gift  — but isn’t that the point? Love isn’t always deep. It can be just spending time doing something to make someone you love happy.

Love exists in every moment, and it’s up to us to be able to remember that. We should dwell on not only the hard times but also the good ones. Love can be a grand gesture, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a gift in and of itself, and, whether you mean to give it or not, there are some people who steal your heart by simply being there for you. In my favorite book, All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, one of the characters says: “You make me lovely, and it’s so lovely to be lovely to the one I love.” I think that’s something we all feel and something we can’t control. When we are around the people we love, we’re lovely, they’re lovely, the world is lovely, and everything falls into place.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Satya Shaw shares the small gestures and moments that have shaped his understanding of love.

A Reflection on Love

Iman Monnoo

I see the light fading everywhere
Out through eyelids and heated 
Skin, once alive with blood and glory.
You are not here to see it now,
But I see how the sun 
Shivers behind her black veil
The one she wears now that you are lost.

I could spill a thousand words onto the page,
Let the ink flow through and stain 
The waxy pages with bits of you.
Your palms, your smirk, your tattoos —
But I cannot.

I cannot reduce you to mere words 
For you were far more than that.
I cannot bottle the sound of your laughter
Nor find the words to describe it. 

That was part of your appeal, wasn’t it?
There was nothing like you.
There will never be anything like you.
And I think that is why 

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Iman Monnoo explores love, loss, and grief.

Obituary

Valarie Kaur

When we choose to wonder about people we don't know, when we imagine their lives and listen for their stories, we begin to expand the circle of those we see as part of us.

The following article is an excerpt from See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur.

Out in the country, far from city lights, the night air was clear enough to gaze into the long shimmering galaxy that stretched across the sky. I would stand in the field behind our house and talk to the stars like they were my friends, just like I talked to the cows over the fence or the horses across the road. Once, while playing in a stream, I saw a butterfly dancing over the water and put out my finger and asked it to come to me — and the butterfly came. It perched on my finger for a long time, long enough for me to peer closer at its wings and praise it before it flew away. Back then, there was no question: The earth under me, the stars above me, the animals around me, were all part of me. And wonder was my first orientation to them all, the thing that connected me to them: You are a part of me I do not yet know. 

I grew up on forty acres in Clovis, California, where the land stretched on all sides of us like an open palm. We were surrounded by peach orchards, orange trees, eucalyptus groves, strawberry fields, and olive trees that my father's father had planted along our dirt road. My family had farmed this land for nearly a century. My little brother and I would run through the fields, play in muddy ditches, and drink at the water pump in front of the two room wooden cabin my father was born in. In the summers, my mother and I would walk the orchards collecting fruit in our shirts, stepping over apricots that had fallen to the ground and spoiled because the fruit was that plentiful. In the winters, when the tule fog rolled into the valley, my father would pull me up onto our tractor and I would sit at his side like a princess as we disked the fields until the sky darkened over the Sierra Nevada mountains. We belonged to the land. 

At night, my grandfather, my mother's father, would tuck me into bed. With his hand on my forehead, stroking my hair, he recited his favorite prayer, the shabad called Tati Vao Na Lagi. The hot winds cannot touch you. There was a tremor in Papa Ji's voice, just as there was a tremor in his hands, and the tremor rose and fell in an arc that rocked me to sleep as he hummed the shabad. Papa Ji was always humming — while surveying the tomatoes in his garden, arms clasped behind his back like the army captain he had once been; while sitting at the kitchen table, cutting ice cream into slices like a cake; while tying his turban in the mornings, slowly and carefully, as if each layer contained secret histories; he was always humming. The sacred music resounded within him, spilling out when he parted his lips. 

“Do you dream?” I asked Papa Ji one night. 

“I was a young man on the beaches of Gaza, and I was running fast like I used to run. My superior officer, British, challenged me to a race, and I was winning,” he said and laughed. Papa Ji was wondrous to me, as infinite and inexhaustible as the night sky. He had worlds of stories in him, ancient stories he would bequeath to me in slivers — stories of gurus and saints, warriors and poets, soldiers and farmers — and these stories formed a long shimmering history that spanned centuries from India to America and ended with me. 

My favorite was our origin story: the story of Guru Nanak, the first teacher of the Sikh faith. Five centuries ago, the story goes, halfway around the world in a village in Punjab on the Indian subcontinent, there lived a young man named Nanak. He was deeply troubled by the violence around him, Hindus and Muslims in turmoil. One day, he disappeared on the bank of a river for three days. People thought he was dead, drowned. But Nanak emerged on the third day with a vision of Oneness: Ik Onkar, the Oneness of humanity and of the world. This vision threw him into a state of ecstatic wonder — vismaad — and he began singing songs of devotion called shabads, praising the divine within him and around him. In other words, he was in love. Love made him see with new eyes: Everyone around him was a part of him that he did not yet know. 

“I see no stranger,” said Guru Nanak, "I see no enemy.” Guru Nanak taught that all of us could see the world in this way. There is a voice inside each of us called haumai, the I that names itself as separate from You. It resides in the bowl that holds our individual consciousness. But separateness is an illusion. When we quiet the chatter in our heads through music or meditation or recitation or song, the boundaries begin to disappear. The bowl breaks. For a moment, we taste the truth, sweet as nectar  — we are part of one another. Joy rushes in. Long after the moment passes, we can choose to remember the truth of our interconnectedness, that we belong to one another. We can choose to “see no stranger.” When Papa Ji was humming the shabads day and night, he was not praying as much as practicing a constant communion with all things. It was his way of remembering the truth — rehearsing his wonder. 

Wondrous are the forms, wondrous are the colors. 
Wondrous are the beings who wander around unclothed. 
Wondrous is the wind, wondrous is the water. 
Wondrous is the fire, which works wonders . . . 
Beholding these wonders, I am wonderstruck. 
O Nanak, those who understand this are blessed. 
- Asa Di Var, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Guru Nanak, 463-464

“Waheguru, Waheguru!” Papa Ji would say. It was our word for God, but he would say it throughout the day like it was a deep breath. “Wahe” is an expression of awe, and "guru" is the light that dispels darkness. So even God's name was an expression of wonder at the divine around us and within us. 

“Look at the hose!" Papa Ji would exclaim, spraying water into the sunlight, making rainbows. “Kamal hai!” Isn't that amazing? My brother, Sanjeev, and I would rush through the rainbows, but Papa Ji was teaching us a lesson, to cultivate our orientation to wonder. When our father came home from irrigating the fields, we would sit close to him as he drew pictures of the solar system on a chalkboard and talked about the universe, his voice rising with excitement: “The sun's light takes exactly eight minutes and twenty seconds to reach us! The light of faraway stars reaches us long after they have died!” When it thundered, our mother would cry out in joy and pull us outside with her to dance in the rain, mouths open to catch rain drops, just like during the monsoons of her childhood. When I wrote little poems about the rain or stars or land, Papa Ji kept them all in a special red binder. On weekends, our cousins and aunties and uncles and grandparents, who all lived on the land with us, would come over to eat and dance together in the night, bhangra beats pounding through our bodies, fingers sticky from pakoras, sparks flying from the fire. On the farmland of California, under the stars, inside the music of my enormous family, the stories of my ancestors, and the sounds of my grandfather's prayers, I was at home in my body and at home in the world. 

Wonder is our birthright. It comes easily in childhood — the feeling of watching dust motes dancing in sunlight, or climbing a tree to touch the sky, or falling asleep thinking about where the universe ends. If we are safe and nurtured enough to develop our capacity to wonder, we start to wonder about the people in our lives, too — their thoughts and experiences, their pain and joy, their wants and needs. We begin to sense that they are to themselves as vast and complex as we are to ourselves, their inner world as infinite as our own. In other words, we are seeing them as our equal. We are gaining information about how to love them. Wonder is the wellspring for love. 

It is easy to wonder about the internal life of the people closest to us. It is harder to wonder about people who seem like strangers or outsiders. But when we choose to wonder about people we don't know, when we imagine their lives and listen for their stories, we begin to expand the circle of those we see as part of us. We prepare ourselves to love beyond what evolution requires. 

The call to love beyond our own flesh and blood is ancient. It echoes down to us on the lips of indigenous leaders, spiritual teachers, and social reform ers through the centuries. Guru Nanak called us to see no stranger, Buddha to practice unending compassion, Abraham to open our tent to all, Jesus to love our neighbors, Muhammad to take in the orphan, Mirabai to love without limit. They all expanded the circle of who counts as one of us, and therefore who is worthy of our care and concern. These teachings were rooted in the linguistic, cultural, and spiritual contexts of their time, but they spoke of a common vision of our interconnectedness and interdependence. It is the ancient Sanskrit truth that we can look upon anyone or anything and say: Tat tvam asi, “I am that.” It is the African philosophy: Ubuntu, “I am because you are.” It is the Mayan precept: In La’Kech, “You are my other me." 

What has been an ancient spiritual truth is now increasingly verified by science: We are all indivisibly part of one another. We share a common ancestry with everyone and everything alive on earth. The air we breathe contains atoms that have passed through the lungs of ancestors long dead. Our bodies are composed of the same elements created deep inside the furnaces of long dead stars. We can look upon the face of anyone or anything around us and say—as a moral declaration and a spiritual, cosmological, and biological fact: You are a part of me I do not yet know. 

But you don't have to be religious in order to open to wonder. You only have to reclaim a sliver of what you once knew as a child. If you remember how to wonder, then you already have what you need to learn how to love. 

Excerpted from See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur, Copyright © 2020 by Valarie Kaur. Excerpted by permission of One World, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

In this excerpt from her book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, Valarie Kaur invites us all to return to the wonder, curiosity, and openness of childhood. 

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