The Merge

💔 Valentine’s Day is complicated.

It’s beautiful. It’s brutal. It’s both the thing that keeps us alive and the thing that can break us into pieces.

For some, today is a celebration. For others, it’s a reminder of what’s missing.

Love is:

💡 The love we long for. 💡 The love we lost. 💡 The love that never arrived. 💡 The love we outgrew.

So what is love?

Cue Haddaway: “Baby don’t hurt me, no more” 🎶

There’s science behind it—dopamine, oxytocin, neural pathways lighting up like a Christmas tree. But beyond the research, beyond the poetic Instagram captions and Hallmark commercials, love is a choice.

❤️ Love is action. ❤️ Love is showing up, even when it’s hard. ❤️ Love is what makes us human.

I wake up every day grateful for the love that surrounds me—family, friends, the people who remain.

But like most of you, I also carry loss.

There are people who should be here who aren’t. People who are sick. People I didn’t get to say goodbye to.

Love is also about who we’ve had to let go.

Where The Merge Came From

A month ago, I was at an event with first responders, talking about mental health, loneliness, and why people are struggling more than ever.

💔 Depression rates are at record highs. 🚨 Suicide is now one of the top global causes of death. 😡 Loneliness is as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

And someone—a former firefighter—said something that stuck with me:

🗣️ “We need something like The Purge.”

As in, one day where people could unleash all their aggression, no consequences.

And I remember sitting there thinking:

❌ That’s not it. That can’t be it. We can’t fight fire with more fire. 💡 What if we did the opposite?

But I didn’t say it.

Because I was in a room full of first responders, and I figured they’d either laugh at me or think I was soft.

But yesterday, on a podcast with a current and former police officer, I finally said what I should have said then.

The Merge: The Experiment

What if, just for one day, we woke up and decided:

✅ Everyone we see is our best friend. 🚗 The guy who cuts you off in traffic? Best friend. ☕ The barista who hands you the wrong order? Best friend. 🏢 Your coworker, your neighbor, the stranger on the street? Best. Friend.

Would the world shift? Would we?

It sounds ridiculous. Unrealistic. Too soft for the reality we live in.

But so is love.

❤️ Love has no logic, no roadmap. ❤️ Love is messy. ❤️ Love makes no sense and somehow makes all the sense in the world.

And it’s the one thing every single human being on this planet is wired to crave.

So, let’s try it. Just for today.

💡 Let’s merge.