Everybody wants to feel worth, but something is wrong in the way we hope to experience it. I have written a commentary called PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE, which I have sent to every one of the over 200 nations on Earth. My commentary is about loving and being loved. I believe love is the only way to save Earth and all the creations upon it. But the love I feel and envision is not romantic, let alone ******. It is has nothing to do with physical attraction or financial wealth or social status or native intelligence. Yet it seems the whole world thinks all the aforemenioned are the pathways to possessing worth, of feeling worth yourself and from others. No wonder there are so many sad, depressed souls on Earth right now. This global notion is false, the diametrical opposite of the locus of worth. The truth is that everyone has inviolable, sacrosanct worth at her/his center. Love and loving are that worth. All of us are imbued with it when we are miraculously created. By loving first ourselves, having been nurtured by others--our parents, our grandparents, anyone in a position to care for us at our earliest of ages--will mean that as we grow older and our self-love increases concomitantly and exponentially, our capacity to love all others will increase ineluctably. For millennia unfortunately, as well as right now, our world has been, and still is, turned inside-out. I wish it to be to turned right-side in. Then all will not only know the locus of our worth--it is at our center--but also feel it and will want to share it with all others. The mansuetude of love and loving will save Earth and all of its creations.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

If you want to know what I looked like when I was 19, google A KID FROM KANSAS LEARNS A LESSON, an article I wrote for the current issue of ANDOVER MAGAZINE. At the bottom of the article is a photograph of a lot of beatiful coeds from Barnard and me. I modeled for ESQUIRE MAGAZINE for a while when I was at Columbia College, Columbia University. I think you'll get a kick out of it. My article, though brief, is apposite.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I have 7.5 billion friends on Earth. The problem is just that I haven't met them all yet.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Some live in houses that their love turn into homes while others live in mansions empty but for silver and servants. Some hear voices angelic, transcendent, while others listen to lies of presidents and pretenders. Some feel love so deeply for those of us who suffer silently while others feel hate for all because they hate themselves. Some touch tenderly those they love while others hit with words and fists. Some will give a helping hand while others simply step over homeless bodies on sidewalks in December's cold. What all should know is that we are one, and as Donne once wrote many years ago, when one dies, we are all the less.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

First, let me make it clear that I believe Jesus was divine. But I also believe every human being on Earth is also divine, and that all creations in the infinite Cosmos are divine as well. Everything is divine, because the Supreme Being made everything, and in so doing, imbued everything with divinity. I have not been a member of an organized religion since I became an adult. I have not read the Bible. The Bible is about love. If it isn't, I don't want to read it;  if it is, then I've already read it. Love is what matters. Chapters and verses are superfluous, and using them are supercilious. So what about Jesus' cheeks? Didn't he say something like if someone hits you in the cheek, then turn your face a bit and let that someone hit you in your other cheek. So what was Jesus' message? His message was about love and loving. Jesus knew that if one acts out his/her pain on another, it is because that person, in all likelihood, had not been loved enough, if at all, during the his/her earliest of years;  consequently, that person was in a chasm of unconscious, unspeakable pain, which ineluctably manifests itself in acts ranging from unkindness to killing. One's behavior can be at the least rough and uncaring and at the worst murderous, if that person was never loved. His/her personhood, on the other hand, is always divine. Jesus was so prescient he understood this for what is was:  a human being acting violently because that human being was in a miasma of unconscious pain for lack of love. So turn your other cheek. It is an act that signals the truth that that interaction, and all similar interactions, are different only by degree, not by kind. The only real antidote to violence is love. But to love, you must first be loved. The Supreme Being knows this. Jesus knew this. And it is way past time for humanity to know this.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

The story is that Rachmaninov was depressed for three years from 1898 to 1901. Eventually he sought the help of Dr. Nikoli Dahl who saw Rachmaninov daily using hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. Rachmaninov responded favorably to these treatments. In 1902 he composed his Piano Concerto No, 2. There are, of course, many great and beautiful musical compositions, but Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2, along with Beethoven's 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th symphonies, together with Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and his Toccata and Fugue in G Minor stand at the pinnacle of the world's pyramid of great music. I have written poems since my early 20s. A poem is not a symphony, but it is a work of art. Do I ever feel the way Rachmaninov felt when he heard the deafening applause after No. 2 was performed for the first time? Sometimes.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Can you imagine the world on fire with love? Certainly it has been on
fire with hate, with cruelty, with wars, with killings, with atrocities, with genocide, with slavery, with murders, with corruption, with racism, with human traffiking (especially of children), with iniquities of all kinds.

Why not an Earth of Love?

The human beings responsible for the abominable aforementioned are those who were most likely never loved enough, if at all, especially at the earliest of their ages. Unconsciously they acted out, and continue to act out, their limitless pain on the rest of the world. We can change the zeitgeist of the world, but only through, especially--though somewhat paradoxically--by loving the very human beings orchestrating these maelstroms of unspeakable evil. The truth is to "rehabilitate" these morally lost souls would be to love them continuously--not to put them in pernicious prisons that only abet evil. I would contain them in what I call "Love Centers" where they would be loved, but never punished, for as long as it would take to change fundamentally their abhorrent behaviors
and beliefs. They no doubt would be contained a very long time to effect
these changes--for years, perhaps decades, even the rest of their lives. And
it would take, I believe, 50 to100 more times the amount of energy of each person who was qualified and decided to do this kind of work in Love
Centers than others now spend at their current jobs. This method of change
I propose no doubt would be met with mighty resistance, but in the end, it would come to be seen as best way out of this immoral abyss that all of us, worldwide, are all forced to live in every day.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks