Oscar Buzz: Forget Best Dressed… How About Best Message

  Last night I was in awe watching the Academy Awards. Not because of the designer gowns, the red carpet parade of who’s who celebs, but because of the powerful and gentle message delivered by A.R. Rahman in his acceptance speech for winning his second Oscar of the night. Rahman received Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Original Song – both for the song “Jai Ho” from the movie “Slumdog Millionaire.” The composer was soft-spoken and unassuming and spoke from his heart. He ended the acceptance speech by saying something in his native language and I had to google it this morning to find out that he said “God is great” in Tamil, something he says after winning every award. “All my life I had a choice between hate and love. I chose love and I am here”, were his concluding words. Each one of us has the opportunity to choose love over hate in every moment of every day. Any time you feel resistance in your body; when you react to any situation with fear, anger, resentment or jealousy, when you catch yourself joining in on gossip about somone who is not there to defend herself, when you judge yourself or others harshly or when you withhold forgiveness from yourself or others and cling to the past – these are all perfect opportunities to practice choosing love. My friend, Karen Paolino just wrote a book called “What Would Love Do?” and it is a great question to ask yourself when life provides you with yet another opportunity disguised as a challenge or problem. When you choose love – everybody wins and this is the only choice we can make that can ever heal the world. We may never get to see how our everyday choices affect others. We may never find ourselves on a stage receiving an academy award for our choices, but how glorious it was to see it happen to someone else and have him give all the glory to God. Love or Hate? How will you choose today?