All You Need is Love

I’ve come to believe that human beings require love for survival.

Not in the poetic sense. Not as a luxury. As a necessity.

When love is absent, something begins to die inside us. We call it loneliness. We call it depression. We call it despair. Whatever name we give it, the result is the same: a growing sense of separation from each other, from ourselves, and from God.

Love is the very heartbeat of the universe.

The Apostle Paul understood this. In Corinthians 13, he doesn't simply tell us to love—he defines it. Love is patient. Love is kind. It is not proud, self-seeking, boastful, or easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. In other words, love is less about emotion and more about action. It is a way of being.

When I look honestly at my own shortcomings, I find they almost always stem from one place: selfishness.

Every resentment I've ever carried was rooted in my belief that I deserved better treatment. Every grudge was born from wounded pride. Every act of impatience came from wanting my needs met before someone else's. Strip away the details and the common denominator is usually me.

The opposite of love is not hatred.

The opposite of love is selfishness.

Hatred, anger, bitterness, jealousy, greed—all of them are expressions of a life centered on self. Love, by contrast, moves outward. It considers others. It sacrifices. It serves.

This isn't a uniquely Christian idea. Nearly every great philosopher, spiritual teacher, and holy person throughout history arrived at the same conclusion: put others first and yourself last. Different words, same truth.

That's why I believe all things that spring from genuine love are holy. Compassion, forgiveness, mercy, generosity, patience—these things elevate us. They bring peace. They heal wounds. They draw us closer to one another.

Likewise, the things that resist love tend to leave destruction in their wake.

When Christ was asked to summarize the entirety of the law, He reduced it to two simple commands: Love God. Love your neighbor.

Everything else was commentary.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that this is the whole game. We complicate it with doctrines, politics, arguments, and opinions, but the truth remains remarkably simple.

It is what fuels the universe.

It is the answer to the question, "Why are we here?"

Above all else, love.

Apologies

In my twenties, I was a lost, scared child who lashed out at everything and everyone--a fearful, broken creature, clawing my way through the darkness. If you crossed my path in those years--

I'm sorry.

In my thirties, I wasn't much better. I found sobriety at 33, but it took years for me to get back on my feet and learn what it meant to be a real man, a true friend, an honorable partner, and a decent member of society. I still didn't get it right for some time.

If I hurt you during those healing years--

I'm sorry.

Things began to come together in my 40's. I began to put the pieces together and really understand what it meant to be an adult. The grief and shame from my former years hit hard. I spent a lot of time taking stock, beating myself up for the pain I caused to those I loved. I wanted so much to tell them--

I'm sorry.

Now in my 50's, I've come to terms with life. I've healed from the guilt and forgiven myself. I haven't forgotten my past, I've learned from it. Never to repeat it. I've grown to love myself and who I've become.

So, if you knew me back then, before I grew up--I believed things I don't believe anymore, I did things I don't do anymore. 

I'm learning and growing, as we all should.

And I'd just like to say--

I'm sorry.

Good News/Bad News

There’s an old saying in the rooms:
“Welcome to recovery. The good news is you get your emotions back. The bad news is… you get your emotions back.”

Turns out, feeling again isn’t always the victory it sounds like.

For a lot of us, emotions were the problem long before the substances. Trauma, shame, anger, fear—they stack up early, and somewhere along the line we discover a solution: numb it. Drink enough, use enough, and the volume drops. The noise goes quiet.

That’s why I drank.

Not because I heard voices—but because my head was loud. Self-doubt, resentment, anger, regret, low self-worth… all of these emotions swirling together into a kind of white noise I couldn’t shut off. Alcohol didn’t fix it. It just muted it long enough to get through the day and pass out at night.

But here’s the catch: when you numb your emotions, you don’t process them. And when you don’t process them, you don’t grow.

Arrested development isn't just a TV show. It's a psychological condition that occurs when we fail to address our emotions for an extended period of time.

If you start drinking at 17 and get sober at 35, there’s a good chance you’re still operating with a 17-year-old’s emotional wiring. The body ages. The life moves on. But inside? You’re stuck where the growth stopped.

That can be a rude awakening when you finally climb aboard the sobriety wagon later in life.

The good news is, it’s not permanent. It just means there’s work to do.

That’s where the steps come in. They give us a framework—not just for staying sober, but for learning how to live. How to take responsibility. How to deal with conflict. How to sit with discomfort without running from it. In short, how to grow up emotionally.

Do I have it mastered? Not even close.

If you ask my wife, she’ll probably confirm there’s still some catching up to do.

But hey... progress, not perfection!

Freedom of Choice

Sobriety is a choice.

So is the work that comes after it.

We talk about God removing our defects, but in my experience, that’s not how it plays out. What He offers is the strength—the clarity—to change. The rest is on us. One decision at a time. One moment at a time.

Every day, we make dozens of small choices without thinking twice. We get up, brush our teeth, shower, fix our hair, shave, put on makeup, choose something decent to wear. None of it is mandatory. We could roll out of bed, throw on whatever’s on the floor, and call it a day.

But we don’t.

Because we care how we present ourselves. We want the outside to reflect something intentional—put together, respectable, in control.

So why not apply that same discipline to the inside?

Because there’s no instant payoff.

The external shift is immediate. You clean up, you look better. Done. The internal work doesn’t work that way. It’s slow. Repetitive. Sometimes invisible. You make the right choice today, and nothing seems to change. You make it again tomorrow… still nothing. It can feel like pushing against stone.

But here’s the difference:

The outside transformation fades by the end of the day.

The inside one, if you stick with it, lasts forever.

Surrender!

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith. Certainty is.

Faith lives in the space before proof. It’s the quiet decision to trust something you haven’t yet tested. I can have faith that a chair I’ve never sat in will hold my weight—but the moment I sit down, faith disappears. It’s replaced by certainty. By fact.

Sobriety worked the same way for me.

Early on, I wasn’t certain the program would work. I hadn’t lived it yet. All I had was faith—that if I showed up, if I did the work, if I followed the steps, something might change. I believed the obsession could be lifted, even though it hadn’t been. Not yet.

I hear people share that the obsession vanished the moment they worked Step One. That wasn’t my experience. Mine was slower. Harder. More human.

What I’ve learned is this: the lifting of the obsession is often proportional to one’s ability to surrender.

And surrender is brutal.

Handing control over to a power you can’t see, hear, touch, or prove doesn’t come naturally—especially when you’ve spent your whole life gripping the wheel. But when I look back honestly, my best efforts at control led me into the rocks. Over and over again.

So I had to ask myself a simple question: what if I let go?

What’s the worst that could happen? I crash again? That’s familiar territory.

But what’s the best that could happen?

God shows up.
The obsession loosens its grip.
And I get my life back.

Choose Your Hard

An old friend reached out to me recently. He said he was ready—ready to work the steps, ready to change his life.

There was just one problem.

He wasn’t clean.

He explained that he was “weaning” himself off heroin with methamphetamine. Yes—meth. As if swapping gasoline for a house fire somehow counts as harm reduction. Apparently, this was his version of a "meth-maintenance" plan.

I told him I’d work with him, no hesitation. But there was a line I wouldn’t cross: he’d have to be off all mind-impairing substances before we could begin. No shortcuts. No chemical loopholes.

“I want to,” he said. “I really do. But detox is so hard.”

He’s right. Detox is hard. There’s no sugarcoating it.

But so is addiction.

Here’s the difference: detox is hard for a while—until you get to the other side. Addiction is hard forever—until it takes everything, including your life.

Addiction is hard. Detox is hard.

Choose your hard.

Center of the Universe

My new mantra: People aren’t against me. They’re for themselves.

Most of the conflict in my life is born from a simple, familiar lie—the belief that someone has deliberately disrespected me, when in truth, their behavior has nothing to do with me at all.

When some dude cuts me off on the freeway, it isn’t personal. He isn’t thinking, I’m going to ruin this guy’s day. He isn’t thinking about me—period. His face is buried in his phone, he notices his exit too late, and instead of driving on and accepting the inconvenience, he swerves across four lanes and nearly takes me out.

I honk. He returns the favor with a hand gesture suggesting I am “number one.”

But he isn’t trying to inconvenience me. He's trying to convenience himself and I happen to be in the way.

Same with the little old lady who darts ahead of me in the grocery line, only to pull out a checkbook and a stack of coupons. She isn’t plotting to waste my time. She’s not thinking about me at all. She’s simply trying to shave a few minutes off her own wait at the expense of everyone else. My existence never entered the equation.

I have to remind myself that we live in a society of people who are largely self-absorbed and inwardly focused—often oblivious to the ripple effects of their actions. Not malicious. Not personal. Just human, selfishly chasing minor conveniences at the expense of self awareness or consideration for others.

They aren’t against me.

They’re for themselves.

And it's not personal... until I make it so.