Choose Love! The Art of compassion.
In these strange and uncertain times it is easy to become apathetic towards the hardships of other people. We might feel that we don't have the space in ourselves to allow the problems of others into our lives, afterall life as we know it has become a minefield of our own worries; rules that must be obeyed and confusion around what is expected from us and what will happen in the future. Worse still is we have learnt to be weary of others, to keep our diatance, to report our neighbours who do not comply, to stay away from our loved ones and to trust nobody. We helplessly place our lives in the hands of people who are seemingly as clueless as we are.
But we must resist! We must not become a society devoid of love and compassion, we can not allow fear to be the driving force. We can choose to focus on kindness and helping others, now more than any other time. Because when we do we will realise that it feels so much better to be fuelled by love and the desire to make a positive difference to another person's life then to be isolated in our own fear.
You can start with a small thing, like picking up the litter on your street, or helping your neighbour with her bin, or smiling at a someone. It can be bigger, like making the choice to reduce your household waste, eating less meat, not driving when you can walk, supporting a local business.
And before you know it, you will be wondering what other positive changes you can make, can you raise money for charity somehow? Can you help with a community project? Can you volunteer an hour, or half a day or a weekend to make someone else's life better, happier, healthier!? You will be amazed at all the projects in your area that need volunteers.
We teach our children to share, to be kind, to listen to others but how often do we practice this ourselves? How often do we demonstrate these actions?
These were questions that have started to feel more pressing to me recently and what is most prevalent is the voice inside of me asking, what can I do to help make things better? How can I be part of the change?
After reading stories about refugees and the dangerous situations they have had to endure, both in their home lands and in escaping violence and persecution, I knew I needed to be proactive in helping this cause. It resounded deep within me, I knew that it was only by circumstance and chance that it was these people suffering and not me and my family. I could see my children in every photo of a child in a refugee camp and my own husband in every father cradling his child. And the horror of losing children and friends and lovers, well I felt that for me, I knew that that pain was unimaginable and unbearable and that it was a fact for too many refugees.
I googled what I could do to help in my area and charities I could donate to, and I signed up to volunteer my time helping refugee families locally and I donated some money. But it didn't feel enough still and I wanted to do something more. So I thought about all the people I knew and who I could enlist to help.
Artist credit: Lauren baker
Choose Love Art Auction was born from this. My friend and gallery owner, Leontia Reilly, was interested to learn of my proposal and she quickly gathered her team of artists and together we planned to host an online Art Auction with 100% of the profits raised going to Help Refugees/Choose Love Charity. The auction goes live October 21st until the 27th. We have worked so hard to get to where we are and I feel proud that we have made a start, a choice to be active and promote kindness and most importantly to care in a time when we are almost encouraged not to, we have decided to choose love.
Visit www.leontiagallery for details on bidding and the artists.
Find us on Instagram leontia_gallery
www.helprefugees.com for details on charity