Shine Bright

Hatred exists.

Sometimes I still just have the hardest time wrapping my mind around this fact.

And yet, it’s there.

You’d think that as a human species who claims to have evolved we’d have learned that hatred solves nothing.

nothing.

Charlottesville.

Charlottesville is just a tiny fragment in the whole of this hateful divisiveness being spread.

But it begins to feel a little more real when it happens so close to home.

I have friends who have children attending UVA. Miss Sunshine plays soccer in the same league as teens who call Charlottesville home. We travel to their fields to play. We shop in the stores and walk their streets.

Divisiveness.

I wonder when it starts. This hatred. This division. And how do you find your soul so dark as to believe the lies of superiority?

And I am not just talking about a race issue. You can apply it to any number of divisive situations that you see every single time you turn on the TV.

Something I do infrequently, as I think it only perpetuates divisiveness.

Personally, I see a big difference between denouncing things that are wrong and fighting for justice versus spewing your own form of hatred from the other side.

Because the latter solves nothing.

To respond to hateful acts with hatred is to become the very thing which you despise. – John Mark Green

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. -Mark Twain

Shining Light.

I started this blog as a place to find myself.

That is still a journey I am on.

But it’s also a place that I hope sheds a little light in the darkness.

Sunsets.

Sunset has always been a place that I find peace.

When I moved to Roanoke, Virginia four years ago, it was the one thing that kept me grounded. This sun that I watched from my hometown in Florida. This same sun that I watched as I moved across the state of Florida. And finally, this same sun setting across the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

It offered me stability and hope that I would crawl out of the darkness that crept up on me during my move.

So when Nikki over at Flying with Water set her creative prompt as The Bright Side because she’d been blindsided by some negativity, I knew that I’d be sharing some of my sunset shots.

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. -Nelson Mandela

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. – Jane Goodall

Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn. – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Politics.

And while it should go without saying, and I have said it in the past, my space on the web is not for politics. I can and will remove hateful commentary.

While politics influence too many people’s opinions, I have yet to witness them be the cause of any aim for a unified collection of humanity.

My personal experience is to see polarization caused by politics and have only seen unification happen outside of that bubble… when individuals decide that their voice makes a difference.

Spread Light.

Keep writing the story of kindness.

Spread your light wherever you go.

Let your light shine!

Amy

• Photos 1 & 3 – Roanoke Mountain on the Blue Ridge Parkway – Roanoke, Virginia {Nikon D3200}
• Photo 2 – From my yard – Roanoke, Virginia {Nikon D3200}
• Photos 4 & 5 – Carolina Beach, North Carolina {Sony Alpha 7II}
• Photoquote – Naples, Florida {Nikon D3200}

WPC- Elemental