Love Makes the World Go ‘Round

Okay, so you know that Laws of Life essay? I wrote one last year and forgot to enter it, and now it's a required assignment this year, so I was wondering if the one I wrote last year is good enough to turn in, or if I should write a new one. It's about Nashville; here it is:

A cooling sensation filled my body as I stretched out my fingertips and embraced the wind that so easily enveloped me, until at last I fell to the beckoning arms of gravity. My eyes fluttered shut; my feet lost connection to my brain as they freely galloped down the steep hill, jumping, dancing. A smile spread across my face and transformed into a laugh as I glanced behind and saw bundled figures attempting to roll down the hill, figures that were instead playing bumper cars while painting horizontal and zigzagged shadows across the landscape. These were, needless to say, the newly met friends who I had spent the past week in Nashville with. These were the people who I had cried with and laughed with through homeless stories and service projects during one short-term mission trip.

My feet hit hard cement, and with a body still filled with the light ecstasy of the night, I jumped in the air and cried joyfully into the sky. I was surprised to hear a reply.

“Are you drunk? Are you drunk?”

An odd question. My eyes wandered around until they locked on a dark figure, sitting alone on a bench. Walking toward him, I shouted out, “No! No, not at all! We’re just having fun!” He smiled and nodded; I could tell he was another tragic homeless story on the streets of the city. We dived into a conversation, so much easier than the past conversations I had tried to strike that week. The presence of the others started to fill the space around me, and we huddled into one captivated body and listened in awe to the man’s tale of faith- a faith that was starting to crumble. Fifty years he had spent on the dreary streets of Nashville; he asked us if another year would really make a difference. The man, Richard, then took off his shoe and revealed a deformed foot; one red toe bent around the other, and the big toe was half the size of a regular one yet equally swollen and huge; it bent this way and that way until the foot could not even resemble a body part anymore. The grotesque image stole the words out of our mouths, and a silence hung over our heads.

“Let’s pray…” a small voice whispered. Holding hands, we murmured our prayers in one voice, willing comfort and love into this life. Amen. Richard looked up with eyes anew, a bright twinkle of hope that had not existed before. A child’s smile shone on his aged face.

“Thank you… thank you…”

Then, I knew. I knew that we had saved a life, that we had completely altered the path of another human being, and that we had flown down a hill and played the roles of angels in Richard’s cold and lonely life. Our eyes sparkled with identical tears, and my hands clasped the hands of the girl beside me, holding it dear to my heart. For although we had re-colored Richard’s hope to a purer shade of white, he had planted seeds in our hearts that continue to grow- even to this day. He taught us that even a small conversation or a random act of kindness can calm the roar in another person’s life, and that so much more lies behind the fundamental needs of a human. Given, we need our food, our shelter, our health. But perhaps the most significant thing that a human needs is not something that teachers can train little kindergarteners to recite, but it is instead something abstract that can’t be stuffed in a bottle and brought to a desert island. For we realized that the beauty of love was what instead made the heart keep beating, and love was what my little church group vowed to bring back home to Atlanta.

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So yeah, hopefully somebody will tell me yes or no?
I honestly don't have time to write another laws of life essay, but half of me wants to.

I'll post later on today about other things in general, but I have webassign to do.
Oh webassign... why dost thou hate me?