THE BIGGER PICTURE: Let your heart radiate with love. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, and feel it. An inner peace. A power. A possibility.
It is there inside you, it always has been. No matter where you are in the world, what your struggle is, how your life is currently set up, that peace is there and you can have it.
This is natural. We are born to love. It is who we are, inherently within us.
Notice how wonderful, how beautiful, it is. Notice that it is actually profound. It gives us perspective. It relaxes us. It makes things possible. It is a very simple power.
It allows us to imagine a world without violence or injustice and, if properly nurtured, gives us the will to take action to make this happen. And, this is key: love must be nurtured.
When we become shocked, confused or filled with grief, we tend to react in ways that assist our survival but do nothing else.
It requires a deliberate act of consciousness - to return to an awareness of ourselves and the meaning of our connections - to break the cycle of devastation and focus on loving again.
This is the only path towards the cessation of destruction.
The current trend of our culture does not help this. We live in a visual media-driven society. Video is led by emotions. It is not the truth of what is seen and heard so much as how you feel that matters. In this, our entertainment media is misguiding us into believing that a "feeling" of love is central to its value.
However, love is only powerful if it is active.
Unfortunately, and increasingly, few people today know how acting in love allows a much deeper set of feelings to flow into one's heart. It is these feelings that touch our soul and, indeed, are indescribable.
Love should make some difference. Otherwise it's impotent.
It's too arrogant a position to be content to say you love someone - communicate how someone is making you feel and believe this is somehow significant enough; that they should just feel better about themselves because you enjoy this feeling about them; and that it should make no other difference to their life.
That is a selfish, immature, naive love. It allows imbalances, and so injustices and ultimately heartache to grow.
In contrast, deep love cannot tolerate the mistreatment or exploitation of those it loves.
We cannot sustain loving in isolation. We need to be bathed in it (at some point, and most likely pinnacle moments of our lives) to nurture our own love.
If love is like a seed planted in your heart, there from the time you were born and before, it also needs to grow. We must cultivate it so that it may become something of practical use or significance.
In this way, its soil is the strength of our character - our discipline and willingness to put in conscious effort even when it may feel too hard to do. Its sunshine comes from the love we receive from others, and its water comes from the tears that wash over us and assist us to heal from the grief that is inescapable when we love deeply.
Indeed, growth does not occur in the absence of challenge or resource.
Thus, time and attention are required towards the practice of loving. From this, we can grow deeper in our knowledge and wisdom. To begin with, there are a few things I have noticed help.
Never be afraid to move in on a situation. People need people. Humans require love. Given the current lack of support, many people have come to be in the habit of isolation. As a result, they may either push help away or hesitate to get close to another's struggle for fear of encroaching or "being in the way".
While there is indeed no point getting close to someone if you mean to make them work harder to have you there, no one of us is designed to overcome pain by ourselves.
We absolutely need people to decide to get close to us, that we are important enough, that this matters to them and that they will act in ways that deliver our dignity, create space and allow us to move forward in love.
The attitude we bring to the practice of loving is extremely important.
Love is a selfless, humble, giving thing. It is about exerting labour for love and no other reason.
It is about doing things when it feels hard and is at the expense of your own convenience, because it makes things better for someone.
At the same time, it requires wisdom to know that the job of the lover is not to protect their loved ones from struggle, but to stand by their side, wrap their arms around them, accept no indignities for them, reflect back belief and admiration in them, and hang in there while they struggle.
If two people are engaged in loving each other, then the balance of give and take is ensured and selflessness cannot be exploited.
Shalini Sinha has founded Forward Movement, a social justice clinic where she practises life coaching, the Bowen Technique, and is training in nutritional medicine.