Trying to love unconditionally more often is not that easy. I tell myself all the time, “Ok, love unconditionally. It’s another person, just like me. A miraculous creation”. Then they make a hard right turn in front of me. No turn signal. No warning. Like the turn was a complete surprise to them.

I jam on the brakes to avoid hitting this stranger. A stranger that I am trying to ‘love unconditionally’. My book and papers slide off the seat beside me and onto the floor. Stuff in the back is no longer as far back as it was a few seconds earlier.

So, do I swear, yell, or make some hand gesture while throwing me off my peaceful roll through the day for a minute, an hour, or the rest of the day? Stuff like this happens all the time. I choose, letting it slide and looking at it from the point of view that I have made sudden turns at times. Perhaps I was lost or looking, and BANG, there’s the turn I am supposed to make.

I choose, that’s true, but I get this wrong as often as I get it right. I am working on it. Practice helps.

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Here are a few words I wrote to someone dear to me recently. Writing the words, that first had to be pondered is a great exercise to me. I cannot mentally and spiritually be in two different places at the same time. So, all the thinking that leads to the time it takes to hand write the words is a lot. It centers me, into a better place. It is so rewarding, even though that’s not really the reason I do it.

I do want to serve. To lift others up. To be in a better space, mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

I find myself using the letters W. F. R. in conversations with people who are all worked up about this or that. W. Written. F. For. R. Reaction. Talk is cheap, and so are a lot of words.

Hopefully, words like these, which are completely sincere and from the heart (not cheap) will get reactions too. Reactions that lift spirits. Reactions that inspire. Reactions that start with a smile. Then progress to swell the heart so that it wants to burst out in love, gratitude, and a desire to pay it forward in their own way.

These are Letters Of Encouragement. Project 14.