Love: The Answer To Every Multiple Choice Question
From Mick Jagger to the DMV, the choice is always the same.
About 10 years ago, I was reading a Mick Jagger interview and was struck by something he said. He was asked about tensions and infighting in the Rolling Stones, and he replied,
“I’m on drugs. Are you a cop?”
Just kidding. What he actually said was something like:
“I knew I was going to forgive them at the end of my life anyway, so why not do it now?”
I’ve come to realize we’re all going to draw the same conclusion with love. When we’re born, we’re immediately separated from the place that we came, which is 100% pure unconditional love and therefore, this separation feels painful as hell, and explains the DMV.
So, naturally, we spend the rest of our lives trying to claw our way back there any way we can: through relationships, drinking, drugs, religion, physical dominance, sex, money, power, any kind of vaping, social media followers, workaholism, joining a fraternity, chasing fame, and—most egregiously—wearing fedoras.
When I saw Joe Dispenza in April in Dallas, he said your soul came here to answer the question:
“Is there anything other than Oneness?”
And, being human, so many of us replied,
“Yes…sports gambling.”
So, being the hilarious, stubborn maniacs that we are, we’re stuck in this wild loop: we feel love, then we feel separate from it, then spend the rest of our time trying to crawl back to it. And around and around we go!
And despite all of us knowing this on an intuitive level, we have to be reminded over and over, and over and over, that love is always the answer. That it’s at the center of every circle.
Because if the circumstances in our lives were multiple-choice questions, they’d mostly look something like this:
Boss Gets Mad at You and Calls You Out On Zoom. Do You…
a) Get super defensive, quit, call all your co-workers so they can confirm how right you are.
b) Apologize while secretly planning for his murder.
c) Google his wife to see if you can arrange revenge/hate sex
d) Do nothing, continue working there and stay mad at him for the next 20 years.
e) Love him.
If you’re like most people, your initial response is, “Okay, well obviously not E. Can I murder my boss? Or at least unfollow him on LinkedIn?”
And that’s what makes us human. We forget. We fumble. For example, after I finish posting this piece that’s literally about how love is the answer, there’s still a chance later on today I’ll have fantasies about dropkicking a telemarketer.
But the goal here isn’t to be some perfect love guru (and not just because that movie was so bad). The goal is to try and fast-forward to love as much as you can.
So the answer to your next multiple choice question will look like this.
Guy cuts you off in traffic. You honk. He gives you the finger. Do you…
a) Honk harder, give him the finger back.
b) Pretend to open your glove box and mime removing a fake sword, escalating this the weird way.
c) Follow him home to honk at his wife and small children.
d) Realize he’s probably insanely stressed out, carrying the unloved rage his parents handed him.
e) Love him.
Sure, maybe you said B just because it sounds awesome and something you’d learn in improv class. But if you even considered D or E, it means you’re slowly lifting that veil of separation.
I promise you, if you stay in touch with your true loving nature, you will reach that conclusion more often, especially as you get older, wiser, and we learn to let things go.
Just know, if you love someone, you can never be wrong.
Even if they’re holding a fake sword.