The Blog of John Patrick Larson

Right then, so the tagline of this blog is “Exploring the notion that life is totally rad when you just love everyone.”

You can see it right there at the top.

Going though life just loving everyone is a tall claim, and indeed generally a tall order.  It sounds like some woo-woo stuff, reserved for hippy-dippy types not well connected to reality (‘cuz there are bad people out there, right?) or perhaps only for luminous figures like the Dali Lama, Mother Teresa, and of course the J-man.

But that’s just what I aim to do.  It was in 2008 when my friend and guru Julie Woods laid it out plainly for me. “John, life is super simple: just love everyone.”  She was able to offer up some followup words to back that up, and I was sold.  It took some practice, but the idea has sunk in and become pretty well engrained into how I roll¹.

This blog is thus a collection of reports from the field about going through life just loving everyone: from befriending butchers in Argentina, to finding sage wisdom in the words of a homeless person while hanging out, to quickly forgiving a lady who hit me with her car. I’m interacting with folks in the world from the premise that everyone is awesome and it’s my job to pay attention enough to figure out in what way they are.  With some people it’s more work than others to uncover the awesome, but the effort is always worth it.

A complimentary theme of this blog is to serve as a repository of traveler’s tales.  Connecting with people outside of your usual life is one of the key perks of travel.  When I travel I assume the best in everyone I meet make and go from there, and this ties nicely with the blog’s central theme.  Travel also tends to make for good stories.

Enjoy!

Notes: