The other day I was having coffee with a friend who wears socks with sandals and still somehow pulls it off. One of those people whose spiritual insight comes casually between sips of lukewarm Earl Grey and commentary on the unfortunate state of American mayonnaise.
He leaned back, looked off into the distance like he was receiving a message from a benevolent alien species, and said, “We are all harbingers of love.”
Now, I’m not proud of what happened next. I did a double take so violently I may have dislocated something. Harbingers of what? Love? Not traffic? Not pestilence or parking tickets or that persistent anxiety that you forgot to return your library books from 2003?
Naturally, I told him I needed to take that sentence home with me. Like a stray dog or a very fancy French cheese I wasn’t sure I could afford but desperately wanted to believe I deserved. So I did. I took it home and let it sit there on the kitchen counter like a riddle wrapped in wax paper. It stared at me while I watered the plants. I stared back.
You see, “harbinger” is not the kind of word that typically cozies up next to “love.” You don’t hear people say, “Oh look, here comes Doris, harbinger of love,” unless Doris is carrying a bundt cake and is known for spontaneous backrubs.
Harbingers usually come with weather warnings or signs that say “abandon all hope.” They show up wearing trench coats and holding clipboards. They are not the people you invite to your birthday party.
Unless you’re into that sort of thing.
But what if we flipped it? What if instead of harbingers of doom, pestilence, and whatever it is Elon Musk is doing to Twitter, we had harbingers of love? Not the Hallmark kind of love with neatly tied bows and perfume commercials where everyone looks suspiciously well-moisturized. I’m talking about senseless, unprovoked, gloriously inconvenient love. The kind that shows up with a plate of cookies when you’re in your pajamas and haven’t spoken to another human in days. The kind that picks up your dropped grocery bag and doesn’t make a whole production about it. The kind that listens, really listens, even when you’re rambling about your dreams where all your teeth fall out but you still somehow win a chili cook-off.
The world right now seems crowded with doom. The news is a slow-motion car crash narrated by a man who looks like he hasn’t slept since the Bush administration. Social media is either a carnival or a funeral, depending on the hour. People are angry at each other for existing in different time zones.
And don’t even get me started on the comments section of anything. It’s as if we’ve all become amateur meteorologists forecasting emotional hurricanes that may or may not involve gluten.
In this chaos, love feels like a ridiculous thing to carry. Like walking into a sword fight with a balloon animal. But maybe that’s exactly what we need. Harbingers of love don’t try to win arguments. They show up. They notice.
They bring soup.
They are the ones who see the woman crying in her car at the gas station and don’t look away. They are the ones who write real letters on real paper and put actual stamps on them like it’s 1947. They are the ones who tell you the truth with kindness, who laugh at your bad jokes because they understand that sometimes laughter is the only thing holding your psyche together with dental floss and hope.
Being a harbinger of love doesn’t mean you have to be obnoxiously cheerful or wear tie-dye. It just means choosing not to be another mouthpiece for the apocalypse. It means interrupting the broadcast of disaster with something unexpected and beautiful. It means asking someone how they are and actually caring about the answer. It means showing up when it’s awkward. It means choosing people over platforms. Life over performance. Connection over correctness.
It’s not always easy. Sometimes you’ll try to be a harbinger of love and people will think you’re weird. I once offered a hug to a man who sneezed near me on the subway and he looked at me like I’d suggested we elope to a commune in Oregon.
That’s okay. Sometimes you’ll get it wrong. Sometimes you’ll love someone who does not love you back. Sometimes you’ll leave the cookies in the oven too long and set off the smoke alarm and the dog will panic and hide in the laundry basket.
But here’s the thing. The world doesn’t need more perfection. It needs more people trying. More people failing beautifully at kindness. More people choosing generosity in a culture of scarcity. More people who say, “I’m here,” and mean it.
So yes, my friend, I have thought about it. We are harbingers of love. Not because we’re perfect, but because we’re trying. One awkward hug at a time.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.