Listen, Carefully

One of my favorite Tom Petty songs is “Listen to Her Heart.” It can be argued I have a lot of favorite Tom Petty songs, and I can’t refute that, wouldn’t even want to because I just loved him, but I guess that isn’t really where I was going with this. Not the first time I distracted myself, won’t be the last. Anyway, the lyrics say “She’s gonna listen to her heart, it’s gonna tell her what to do.” The context of it is that some slick D-bag is trying to steal his girl, but he knows she won’t go because her heart will guide her to stay with him. That’s not quite where I am headed with this today, but it’s still a great song.

I am going to listen to my heart, and it’s gonna tell me what to do. That hasn’t always served me well, when it came to romance stuff, but that’s not where I am headed either today. What is your heart telling you? Is it taking you to a place of peace, a place of love? Or is your heart shrinking away from love and understanding? I keep going on the Facebook, and the hate I am seeing lately, it’s just ridiculous. And it’s subtle, people aren’t declaring their hatred on the podium, except they are. We are wrapping up Pride Month, and I see the anti-LGBTQ posts. It’s been a lot of BLM this month too, with so many posts knocking and degrading that too. If you support something outside of “the norm” I bet I can find someone that will get in your face about so fast it will make your head spin. The thing that gets me is these people mostly claim to be Christians. Boy, they sure lost the message that the namesake of Christianity was pushing.

You remember Jesus, right? He was kind of the first Peace and Love Hippy. He traveled around with his buddies, preaching some peace, love and harmony. He just needed a VW Van and he could have hit more area than the deserts he wandered around. He was on a mission from God, not unlike the Blues Brothers were, trying to do good and spread love wherever he went. His time here was cut short, but in that time he got a lot of people to listen, enough so that a whole religious movement called Christianity grew out of it, and there are many different churches that grew out of it. Then it got messed up, by people of course, that let some other noise drown out the words, of love, coming from their hearts.

And we as humans find all kinds of reasons to justify our hate. Different skin color, different religious affiliation, country your family is from, who you love, sports team you like, breed of dog you prefer, news channel you watch, music you listen to, and on and on and on. The thing is, we are born to love. We all come into the world the same way, and we are all going to leave it at some point, and that may happen different ways, but dead is dead. So, in that time in between, why are you filling that time with bitterness and hate? Why would you go out of your way to make another person miserable? Because they look a little different than you? Really? How did you get there? You didn’t listen to your heart, because if your heart did tell you to hate someone, it’s because someone re-programmed it and messed it up. You need to do a reboot. Turn it of, and turn it back on. It’s not telling you to hate, that is outside voices. Listen more carefully, your heart is pumping love along with that blood that keeps you going.

I don’t understand where it all went wrong, but it happened thousands of years ago when someone somewhere got the wrong idea about his neighbor. Maybe he was on his lawn, and he yelled “Get off my lawn” and the first obscene hand gesture was born. But that was learned, it wasn’t there to start with. They didn’t listen to their heart. A lot of hatred is born out of putting things above the value of a person, a human being. But when you were a kid, looking up at the clouds in the sky, guessing what shape it was, some little kid in another town, state, country or continent was doing the same thing. We all look up at night and see the same stars, no matter where you go. We live here together, so we really should love here together.

People are a mess, and we see plenty of examples of that every day. When someone wrongs you, which happens, I can understand some anger, resentment, or even a level of hatred that could grow. But the person walking down the street with a different skin tone didn’t hurt you. The homosexual couple that sits down to dinner down the street from you is not hurting you. The people praying together in the synagogue or mosque are not walking on your lawn. So maybe just turn down the volume on your hatred a little, and listen to your heart. That will quiet your soul down a little, bring a little peace to your mind. Listen, it’s there whispering to you, trying to bring a calm. Let love wash over you a little, it’s a pretty cool feeling.