Love isn’t just an emotion or choice. Love is the fundamental force that transforms existence into living. Without love, we might go through the motions, but we miss the essential experience of being alive: The archaeological journey of digging through the layers of conditioning and circumstance to uncover what was always there. Love stands as the only foundation we can trust, for everything else shifts like sand beneath our feet. Even purpose, that noble thing we chase, proves unstable in the end. Biblical stories reminds us time and time again that everything is subject to change, that life keeps moving forward no matter how desperately we want to freeze a moment in time. We must resist the human urge to nail ourselves to any single experience, whether triumph or tragedy, because neither defines us. They don't alter our fundamental nature. Rather they help us recognize it more clearly.
And what about values? Pitched as stability in an unstable world, our deepest values are discoveries rather than decisions. Not the collection of principles we think we’ve gathered, but something far more profound. Our values are intrinsic gifts, placed within us at birth, waiting to be discovered through the act of living. Experience doesn’t change these core truths—it simply makes them apparent. We are who we are, and we will keep being who we are. External upheavals can’t really touch what matters most. Our core remains intact whether experiencing triumph or devastation. And thus, our path becomes following the thread of who we’ve always been. Life is less about becoming someone new and more about becoming wholly who we are. Why else would every person’s DNA be unique?
Each of us arrives with our own diamond to polish, our own distinct way of catching and reflecting light. But insecurity blinds us to this truth. We waste precious energy wanting to be rich like someone else, or beautiful like another. We obscure our natural brilliance placing ourselves in boxes that were never meant for us. Eventually becoming pale imitations of others rather than vivid expressions of ourselves. This was never the point.
Tragedy lies in how much brilliance we dim by trying to force our diamond, a completely different stone, to shine like another’s. We constantly chase versions of achievement, demanding our stone to reflect light through imagined facets because insecurity whispers that our natural radiance isn’t enough, that we must contort ourselves into alien patterns of worth. But our essential nature is already complete, already valuable. The counsel of insecurity is manufactured by looking out. We should seek rather to look in.
Those who find peace in contemplation need not force themselves to command every room. The soul that discovers joy in simple moments need not chase grand adventures that belong to other hearts. Every polished diamond looks different because every stone began with its own unique structure. Our DNA carries not just biological information, but a cosmic assignment to discover and reveal the particular way we were meant to shine, our brilliance, our truth... Love is our polishing wheel.