je t’aime paris: when you are scared, just look up

you have to look closely, but the stars are there.

i captured this image early friday morning, just hours before the news of deadly violence in the city of love. i posted the photo on instagram, just 9 hours before the attacks, and i wrote about how the stars remind me that we are all brothers and sisters. that we all sleep and eat and live and dream and hope under the same sky.

i always feel such peace and hope when i see the sky, no matter what time of day. that’s why i shared this photo in my instagram feed. before everything changed… again.

but, what about now? how do i feel when i look up now into the dark night… now that the world has been shaken again? now, that violence has touched + frightened us again?

well, my friends, i still feel the same. because i cannot feel anything else. if i do, then hate wins. and i refuse to let hate win. i refuse to live my life by running away, instead of running toward. and we must run toward each other. we must keep loving and living and believing.

and i promise you, that, when we live from a place of openness and tolerance, a place of love and peace, then even the darkness will not seem so dark. we will remember the stars. and we will grab on to even the tiniest sliver of light that they give us… until the sun rises again.

“Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

onwards + upwards! xoxo