Choose love
Julianne Horensky
She/They
Staff Writer
10/4/22
Plymouth State University had the pleasure of hosting Scarlett Lewis on Saturday, Sept. 24th, for its 2nd annual Choose Love event. Lewis is the founder of the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, which is dedicated to advancing social, emotional-based learning, fostering healthier thought processes, and building a close-knit community.
The main attraction of the Choose Love event was the speech given by Lewis, discussing the founding of the movement and its greater purpose. The most impactful part of her speech was how she spoke about the murder of her 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. She continues to talk about how she came home to find a message that Jesse left on her kitchen chalkboard. He left the words “Norturting Helinn Love” (Nurturing, Healing Love) inspiring the movement.
The movement uses a simple equation to remind people how to choose love. Courage + Gratitude + Forgiveness + Compassion in Action = Choosing Love. Throughout Scarlett’s speech, she delved deeper into each facet of ‘choosing love’ over harmful thoughts. Courage is the ability to walk through challenges, choose to love, be gratuitous, forgive, and be compassionate. It is also the ability to step outside your own pain to help others. Focusing on gratitude allows you to fight through negative thoughts. Forgiveness is a gift that you give to both yourself and others, it helps you save yourself from pain. Compassion is your ability to identify and act on the needs of yourself and others.
A major aspect of the movement is healing and working through the pain. Scarlett uses the example of kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing pottery with gold to explain why pain can be helpful. Pain gives people the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and grow from them, pain forces people to make choices and discover their strengths.
The biggest takeaway from the speech is that there is no such thing as a bad person, as Scarlett said, “There are only good people, and good people in pain.”