1. Love comes in endless forms in its endless
ways: from father to son, from brothers and
sisters, from teammates and from the stranger
on the street. So what is love? That’s some-
thing that people have been wondering about
for millennia. From the Greek logicians to the
Western Christian philosophers, to modern-day
independent writers, love is something we all
experience in one way or another. Yet, we have
different opinions on what it is and its role in
our lives, and our lives change based on our
attitudes about love and the instances of love.
What, then, is universal love? Does it mean
that a person is accepting of everything and ev-
eryone, and treats others with compassion? Or
does it mean that you are willing to sacrifice
your personal comfort for the good of another
human who you may not have ever met? It’s
hard to realize what universal love is, when we
cannot agree on what love itself really is. So my
ideas of love are going to be different than an-
other’s idea of love, and that applies to universal
love as well. Personally I have not seen many
instances of universal love. Looking back, I
wonder if I even ever experienced or witnessed
an instance of universal love. There were times
when I saw a man stranded on the side of a free-
way with a broken car, and I saw someone stop
and help them with tools. I’ve had teachers in
elementary school that would encourage me to
work harder, and that I would be a fantastic stu-
dent later on. I have also seen my friend’s dog
protect my friend’s cat from a stray dog. I like
to think that universal love means to love oth-
ers regardless of the conditionals we put up for
our own individual love. Perhaps we may not
love someone if they have done a terrible thing
to us in the past, or we may not love a certain
group of people for personal reasons. I think
that universal love means to love someone for
being human, for being another living being that
can also learn to love. It means to love someone
for sharing with me the basic things that make
something human. It may seem vague, so an
example would be that one would love some-
one on the other side of the planet, enough so
that if they ever met, one would help the other
out.With this in mind, I think that peace is only
possible if people learned to love more in gen-
eral. If people became more accepting of human
flaws and shortcomings, and judged others less
harshly, we would have fewer conflicts. After
all, the judge is human and so is the judged.
Personal greed and desires aside, love would
serve to act as the bridge for human interaction.
I am not sure if this makes sense to others, but
it makes sense to me – if only everyone treated
their worldly neighbors with kindness, we
would have a great world neighborhood.
To be a citizen of the world means to be
aware of social issues in not just your own
country, but in those of other countries as well.
Although today’s technology allows us to have
information at fingertips, the same conduit that
allows us to have this access is often a numbing
distraction from all the issues that exist in the
world. It is difficult to keep up with some of the
global problems because of the problems in our
individual lives, as well as those that originate
locally.To be a human with rights is to have
certain boundaries and entitlements that others
respect and bestow upon you. My right to pri-
vacy exists because others wish to keep their
own rights to privacy and have created a social
contract in which everyone is given this right. In
my view, while natural rights are human inven-
tions, they must be protected because they are
manmade, and can be destroyed by other peo-
ple. We are the greatest asset and the greatest
threat to the existence of our rights. To maintain
these rights is to acknowledge that you are en-
titled to those rights, and that you believe that
the other person deserves those rights as well.
Only by safeguarding the rights of others can
we safeguard our own private rights. Western
Enlightenment thinkers tinkered a lot with the
idea of rights, but in the end we, the progeny,
are the ones that ensure that the tyranny of the
elites as well as the tyranny of the majority does
not eliminate what allows us to be free humans
in a democracy.
I felt the first few snowflakes gently kiss my
nose, whispering cold secrets onto my face.
After a couple steps, the snow was swirling
down, each feather of snow blurring around
and around in an indiscernible confusion, my
eyes flickering back and forth, back and forth
trying to make sense of what was happening.
This silent fury, lit by the pale cast of street-
lights and fading stars, tiptoed across the roads,
the houses, the lost feet ambling over white
sidewalks. The mist of breath seemed to freeze
midair, held tight by those never-ending snow-
flakes. A step. Another step.
There is a burden that comes with breath, a
certain weight that comes with the opening of
our eyelids and the closing of our hands. If I
have ever known love, it is the lifting of, the
relieving of, the cure for, the struggle above,
the stepping behind of an oppression, of an af-
fliction that exists as an antithesis, as an oppo-
site. You have taught me that there are people
that can go their whole lives being denied the
peace that comes with identity and the first, full-
breathed disarray that blooms from a loosening
of chains. I felt the cold pitter-patter across my
shoulders and wondered if love was very orga-
nized at all.
With my hands in my pocket, I shivered
through the empty streets, straitjacketed in
snow, mute with empty thoughts. I could see
the Christmas trees, the lights, the ornaments,
the warm fires, the laughing families. I could
see them all through translucent windows, pic-
ture frames filled with all the dreams and aches
of an unfeeling heart. Are they happy? Are they
grateful? Are their hearts filled with all the hol-
iday healing that saved them from the rest of
the year?
I don’t know.
A step. Another step.
There is an aching that comes from the awak-
ening of a premature freedom. If I have ever
known peace, it is in the pain that undulates in
the unbroken texture of time, a gentle lulling
that is seen through one weathered face to an-
other, felt through the scars and unbroken skin
of one hand upon another, understood through
one mind and through another. We have been
taught that the growing pains of the passing of
time are our inheritance, but I have never be-
lieved in finishing something I never started.
Could I find beauty in a world that understood
beauty as something temporal, fleeting, as mer-
curial as the sea? There are always tides beneath
tides, but the surface of water holds no weight.
You and I are the same ocean, the same waters
that flow through my eyes fall from the heights
of your heart.
I watched the man sit on the curb, a hand-
made cardboard sign and a small plastic cup for
company, his Christmas gifts, generously given
from the world to him. Did he have a family
who missed him? What did he want for Christ-
mas? He looked at me then. Eyes filled with….
nothing. No desperation. No hope. Nothing. Or
was it just that I was blind? Blind to the struggle
that burned within him just as brightly as it did
in me. I wanted to understand. You have taught
me that understanding is the first step towards
anything that could ever matter.
Love? Hope?
Maybe he held more within his gaze than what
the world told me he did. We broke eye contact,
and I kept walking, letting the snow swallow
me up, knowing that no amount of snow could
swirl with the understanding that churned in that
man’s eyes. A step. Another step.
There is a horror that comes when a lie be-
comes truth. The lie of duality, of dichotomy,
of a push and pull that understands existence as
struggle, of good and evil, animal and machine,
dark and light. There is no such thing. There is
only you and me; the person next to you is the
person next to me, the ground you walk upon is
the sky that rests upon your head; the air that I
breathe is the air of my son and my grandson.
This is peace. This is a love that knows struggle.
I finally grow tired, and I sit down wondering
where all this snow came from. It’s so much,
and yet, life moves on. Trees die, animals die,
and nothing really changes. Except for all the
forgotten. The ones dead in some street corner,
imaginary families wondering where they’ve
gone. The ones who seem okay except when
they cry themselves to sleep in a lightless house.
The ones who have given up and sat down on
some curb on the side of the road as life moves
on. There are lies underneath all this white, lies
Global Revolution
Human Rights
Page 2
The Over-Extension of Power
Women’s Rights
Page 3
Final Assignments
Page 4
Volume 1
Universal Love and Peace
Spring 2015
Art Drawn by Juliet Norris-Clay
Art Drawn By Lisa Ramos
What does “universal love and peace” mean?
Love and Peace
By Jonathan So
By Jay Kim
By Shalina Patel
that tell him that he’s alone, lies that tell him
that it is what it is. So much snow. A step. An-
other step.
Steps taken. Steps given. I stand in front of
my house with snow in my hair, looking up at
the dark windows, the locked door, the closed
garage, forgotten in the Christmas spirit. I lay
down on the thin layer of ice forming on the
asphalt, catching snowflakes in my mouth.
ULAP Publications
To me universal love and peace means equal-
ity and being kind to one another. By equality
I mean that everyone regardless of physical ap-
pearances, sexual preferences, race/ethnicity,
gender, among many other categories are treated
equally and given the same rights. Though I
believe the world we live in has come a long
way in accepting differences, there are still a lot
more things we could be doing.
I would love to see a world where we didn’t
have to have organizations like LGBTQ, or
even a rainbow for pride, because that would
mean that gays were given the same rights as
everyone.
In this perfect world, homosexuality would
be normalized. There wouldn’t be this idea of
“coming out” because it wouldn’t matter what
sex a person preferred.
In this perfect world, people loved one an-
other and lifted each other up and instead of
bringing each other down.
In this perfect world, there would people’s
vote would not dictate the happiness of others.
This perfect world can exist.