What happened next was love.
Beauty hunting is right. I am out there with my bow and arrow, folks. Hunting beauty down. And sometimes, I do not have to look very far at all. Sometimes it’s just so right here.
I was walking down the street in Santa Monica yesterday with my friend Rachel Brathen (aka @yoga_girl on instagram) and she said, “Look!” So I did. Natch.
She’s pointing to a man on a bike with a big sign over his chest that says Be Love.
Um.
Remember that guy? I met him in the library a couple years ago and asked him if I could take a picture of him with his sign (he had it on then, too.) He said I could have the snap if I wore the sign. Duh.
I did.
I wrote about it here. Elizabeth Gilbert even shared the story. It was pretty heartwarming. I said may we all walk around with a “Be Love” sign over our hearts.
So yesterday, Rachel, (who has a million and a half instagram followers what what?) saw the same Love Dude on the street. On his bike.
I beckoned him over to us and her dog, Ringo The Gringo.
You know when I am alone how adventure always ensues? Well, the three of us? Me, Rachel and Ringo? Magic. Pure magic.
I said to Love Dude, “You’re David. I met you in the library. You gave me your sign.”
Please watch both videos below!
I gave him twenty bucks and he said if he was to take it that I had to wear the “Be Love” sign for two full weeks.
I am taking the challenge. Will you? You can make your sign invisible but will you wear one? Please? Let me know. If you do instagram use the #belovechallenge tag. I am at @jenpastiloff over on those parts.
ps- We all wear signs. Invisible ones, mostly. What does yours say?
Some say: Stay away. Some say: Don’t come near me. Some say: I am not enough. Some say: Be Love.
We get to choose what our signs say.
Also: he drops mad wisdom in these videos.
Like, whoa.
He says, “I am looking for someone whose compassion is greater than their passion.”
Yea. Little gems like that are floating throughout the vids. Please watch and share. This is the kind of stuff that needs to get shared on social media. Not Kim-Whatever-Her-Name-Is’s ass. Hell, this is the kind of stuff that needs to get shared on the planet.
Word.
I mean, love.
Love, Jen xo
“Here’s the thing about Jen Pastiloff, folks. Here’s the revolutionary thing.
She listens.
She listens with an intent focus, a focus that follows your words inside you. Because she has hearing problems, she watches your lips as you speak, and she plucks the ash of your words from the air and takes it inside herself and lays it beside her heart, where before too long your words start beating as if they were strong, capable, living mammals. And then she gives them back to you.
Boiled down, this is the secret to Jen’s popularity. She can call what she does Beauty Hunting–she is for sure out there helping people find beauty. She can start a campaign called “Don’t be an asshole” and remind us all to stop a second and please, please, please be our better selves. She can use words like attention, space, time, connection, intimacy. She can ask participants to answer questions like What gets in your way? What stories are you carrying around in your body? What makes you come alive? Who would you be if nobody told you who you were? All of that is what it is. But why it works is because of her kind of listening.
And what her kind of listening does is simple:
It saves lives.” ~ Jane Eaton Hamilton.
I love this. Especially when he says: “your compassion is greater than your passion”.
What a wise wise person. By looking at him, one would never guess what was about to come out of him, but his words were profound! Love comes in many different packages, and not all the pretty ones! Well done finding this gem !