Why Love Is The Only Future That Holds
Last week, our son came home from a trip to South America, where he had rekindled a meaningful relationship from several years earlier.
Almost immediately, Teresa and I felt something shift. Alongside his joy was a quiet awareness we hadn’t expected: there is now a real possibility that his life could unfold thousands of miles away from us. For some families, that’s familiar terrain. For us, it was new.
And with it came a complicated mix of emotions—joy for him, fear for us, imagined loss, and the unsettling realization that life may be inviting change we didn’t choose.
As parents, we know our role is to help our kids launch well. And yet, as we tried to navigate our own fears, those unspoken anxieties rippled outward. Our son wanted to share his excitement freely—and instead found himself carrying the weight of our forebodings.
It all surfaced a few days later over coffee.
What started as a conversation grew heated. The intensity was uncomfortable. We pressed on anyway—naming fears, circling vulnerabilities, stumbling toward understanding. Hours later, something landed in me with unexpected clarity.
This wasn’t happening because we’re a family that fights.
It was happening because we’re a family that loves.
Love doesn’t protect us from pain. It asks us to walk through it.
Love means holding joy and fear in the same hand.
Love means staying present in uncertainty, especially when what we want most is certainty or control.
The Question Beneath The Question
That moment widened my lens.
If love brings us face-to-face with both hope and loss—if this is true in families, friendships, and communities—then the question isn’t how we avoid that tension. The question is how we meet it.
As a new year opens in front of us, I find myself less interested in making resolutions and more interested in starting from what’s actually true, rather than what I wish were true.
Life is complicated. The road ahead rarely goes straight. And the older I get, the fewer things land in tidy black-and-white categories. Instead of feeling unsettling, that actually feels like a relief—like I don’t have to pretend I know more than I do.
So rather than asking, What should I fix this year? I find myself asking kinder, more workable questions.
What do I actually know for sure?
Where are the handholds when the climb gets steep and my legs start to wobble?
And if I stripped everything down to the essentials, what is the one small thing that might quietly make the rest of life a little more livable?
A Dream That Won’t Let Go
As I sat with those questions, a familiar song kept returning—not as an answer, but as a mirror.
John Lennon’s “Imagine” isn’t a policy proposal.
It isn’t naïve optimism.
It’s a persistent dream.
A dream that we might find better ways to share this world together.
That wherever greed shows up, we would work to loosen its grip.
That wherever there is hunger—physical, emotional, relational—we would meet it with care instead of indifference.
It imagines a world where belonging replaces tribalism.
Where domination gives way to dignity.
Where religion stops dividing us and becomes an honest and humble exploration of the spiritual dimensions that connect us.
But what moves me most now is this: The song isn’t about escaping this world.
It’s about taking responsibility for it.
Not someday.
Not somewhere else.
But here and now.
The Only Vision That Holds
And maybe this is the foothold I’m choosing this year.
Love is the one vision for the future that never changes.
Every generation longs for it.
Every culture sings about it.
Every system eventually collapses without it.
But love doesn’t become real through wishing or waiting.
It becomes real when we take responsibility—to engage in proactively growing our ability, our willingness, and our capacity to live love well.
Not as sentiment.
Not as ideology.
But as an actual daily, moment-by-moment practice in all of life.
Love, simply understood as caring for the well-being and security of others as much as we care for our own.
Participation Over Perfection
The dream behind Imagine isn’t that the world becomes “as one” overnight.
It’s that enough of us choose to live this way—starting within ourselves—so that love ripples outward into our families, our communities, our work, and the lives we touch.
So as this new year begins, my hope isn’t for new resolutions or for perfectly laid out plans. It’s for participation.
That we stop outsourcing responsibility for the world we’re shaping every day.
That we live as if love—practiced here and now—actually matters.
“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.” It’s my hope that this year you'll join us, and the homes, communities, and workplaces we share will learn to live as one.
Until next week,
Jonathan Penner | Co-Founder & Executive Director of LifeApp
Resources To Dig Deeper
Book
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Love: Essential Writings on Love's Transformative Power
MLK on Love gathers Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s writings, sermons, and reflections to reveal love not as a soft virtue or abstract ideal, but as a disciplined, courageous practice essential for shaping a just and humane world. For King, love was not optional—it was the only force capable of addressing humanity’s deepest fractures, from personal conflict to systemic injustice. This collection shows how his understanding of love evolved through lived struggle, moral responsibility, and sustained commitment, reminding us that love becomes transformative only when we take responsibility for living it here and now. In a time hungry for vision without illusion, MLK on Love echoes the central truth of this newsletter: love is the one future that holds—but only if we grow our capacity, willingness, and courage to practice it in real life.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Music
Imagine
Imagine is often misunderstood as a utopian fantasy, but at its heart, it’s a moral invitation. Rather than offering a political blueprint, the song asks a quieter, more demanding question: What kind of people would we need to become for a more peaceful world to be possible? By imagining a world less driven by greed, fear, domination, and division, writer John Lennon shifts responsibility away from distant systems and toward the everyday choices we make here and now. Imagine isn’t about escaping reality—it’s about facing it honestly, and growing our individual and collective capacity to live love well, starting in the only places we truly have influence: within ourselves and in the lives we touch.
-Herbie Hancock featuring Pink, Seal, India.Arie (07:20)