How Your Love's Affecting Our Reality?

All I can guess is this earworm is the universe’s way of telling me that all is not lost, even if it looks like it is. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

Aug 19, 2025

How Your Love's Affecting Our Reality?

by C.A. Matthews

Have you ever experienced an “earworm” or a “sticky tune”? An earworm is a song or melody (or part of one) that gets stuck in your mind that you can’t seem to shake for days on end. You keep hearing it over and over again during the quiet parts of your day. You’re not even sure how or why it happens, but somehow it does. There’s nothing you can do to shake it loose, either. I know—I’ve tried!

I was infected with an unusual earworm this past week. It’s from the chorus of a pop hit from 1999 that I must have heard playing on my car radio recently. What makes this earworm even more unusual is that it’s not from a song that I particularly like. I’m not even a fan of the group that recorded it. In fact, I don’t think either one of my daughters were a fan of the group or the song back when. So why are these words repeating constantly in my head?

All you people, can't you see, can't you see
How your love's affecting our reality?
Every time we're down, you can make it right
And that makes you larger than life
Chorus from the 1999 Backstreet Boys’ song Larger Than Life, written by Brian Littrel, Kristian Lundin, and Max Martin.

The one line that really haunts me is Can’t you see how your love’s affecting our reality? Yeah, it’s part of a catchy lyric and tune, but there’s something about that question that keeps bugging me. I really want to know what the answer to it is. It’s driving me crazy.

How is your love affecting our reality?

According to the song lyrics, we can’t see it. We can’t actually see or know how our love (and this could mean anything from romantic love to neighborly love to compassion and empathy for all humankind and the earth itself) affects the reality of the universe itself. But the next lines show us that our love does indeed hold tremendous power: Every time we're down, you can make it right/And that makes you larger than life.

Deep stuff, huh?

All I can guess at this point is this earworm is the universe’s way of telling me that all is not lost. So, when it comes to how we can end the horrible genocide in Gaza, all is not lost, even if it looks like it is. I don’t know why I’ve come to this conclusion, but I feel it in my bones. Call it intuition or a gut instinct. Even when things seem down (or impossible) for us, we can make them right (or at least better). Perhaps that’s what makes us all larger than life—we have more power than we could possibly dream of.

We need to start using our power for good and to save lives. Right now.

A lot of Substack commentators embrace various creeds and belief systems and tell us to think positive, but I’m not going to assume anything I write here will change your mind. Others are much more persuasive and eloquent than I am. But I implore you to keep an open mind for just a little while longer.

I think you’ll agree that humans are capable of love. Humans are also capable of hate. Which emotion is the strongest one for you? If you had to choose between love and hate, which one would you want to keep forever in your heart, in your mind, or even as an annoying earworm repeating endlessly in your head?

I’d hope you’d choose love since it’s the more positive of the two emotions, but our actions give us away. Many of us say that we “love our neighbor,” but then we turn around and say or do some horribly cruel things to our neighbors and the world at large. Our actions speak much louder than our words. Our actions scream our intent and motivations, and our words (or propaganda) can’t hide them.

What’s happening to innocent people—especially children—in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, and any number of places on Earth right now demonstrate that most Westerners’ actions are not guided by love. They don’t come from any wellspring of compassion. They come out of our hatred, our bigotry, our greed, and a lust for power and others’ possessions.

Publicly we might give what sounds like logical reasoning, but these actions themselves don’t demonstrate love by any means. In the US, we pour billions of dollars of arms into a genocide in Gaza or a proxy war in Ukraine without a thought to what happens to the people living there.

Sure, Westerners claim they do what they do because they love freedom and they want to share freedom with others whose land/natural resources they’ve secretly wanted for centuries. But these supposed motivations beg the question of my earworm: How is your love affecting our reality?

We in the West are doing great harm to our reality by our actions. Our aiding and abetting a genocide in Gaza is affecting our shared reality in an extremely negative way. Our actions declare that the Palestinian people don’t qualify as our neighbors, so they can be exterminated at will—and we’ll pick up the costs. Our actions say that we can shut down protests at home against this genocide for the flimsiest of reasons and that we can censor journalists—or even have them murdered in cold blood—if they report the truth of what’s happening in Gaza.

Whatever this is, it’s not love. Not by a long shot.

We won’t become larger than life, or have the power to change things for the better, if we’re not operating out of a reality of love for our neighbors. We can’t continue lying to ourselves by saying, “It doesn’t matter what happens to others. They’re just Palestinians or the homeless of Los Angeles…” We’re not fooling anyone. If one group of people doesn’t qualify as our neighbors, or fellow human beings, then we’re not operating out of love. Racism/elitism is the antithesis of love.

Those that operate out of the opposite of love aren’t larger than life. They are small in life. There’s a lot of small people in the world whose hearts are full of hate. Most of them live in Washington, DC, in my opinion. However, I’m sure you can find just as many small people in other Western capitals.

Small-minded people—or should I say small-hearted people—are why we’ve seen the horrors drag on and on for almost two years in Gaza. It’s why we don’t see peace talks working to end bloodshed anywhere in world. Why make peace when endless war and genocide are so very profitable?

Small people operating out of hate magically rise to the top in the corrupt system of capitalism. Capitalism rewards small people. Small people eventually become our rulers, because their hateful actions please the top capitalists or oligarchs who make the most profit from these actions. I think you can see that it’s imperative we rid ourselves of the small people and the corrupt system that sustains them at the expense of human life—as quickly as possible. Our planet’s fate depends upon it.

In summary: All you people, can't you see, can't you see/How your love's affecting our reality?/Every time we're down, you can make it right/And that makes you larger than life.

Use your love, demonstrate your love through actions—through a protest march, through a general strike, through a boycott of a corporation that breeds hatred in the world. Share your love freely with your neighbors wherever they may live. Love can be as simple as working in a soup kitchen or as complex as brokering a ceasefire. It may not look like we’re doing much by our individual actions, but if they are done in love, collectively they will affect our reality. For the better.

We will uplift all who are down. We will make it right. We will live larger than life. All we have to do is continue loving and not hating.

And avoid earworms as much as possible!

Affect Your Reality Positively—Read Indie Media!

THE HIND RAJAB FOUNDATION https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/

The West Bank: Our Complicity In Gaza Has Set The Stage For a Second Genocide https://savageminds.substack.com/p/the-west-bank

Data shows the genocide in Rwanda 31 years ago is the closest comparison to Gaza we have in the modern history of the world https://www.thenorthstar.com/p/data-shows-the-genocide-in-rwanda

Israel Is So Evil That It Has A Military Unit Dedicated To Excusing Atrocities https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-is-so-evil-that-it-has-a-military

Smotrich Announces Major West Bank Settlement Expansion To ‘Bury the Idea of a Palestinian State’ https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/14/smotrich-announces-major-west-bank-settlement-expansion-to-bury-the-idea-of-a-palestinian-state/

Israelis Understand That Trump Can End The Nightmare In Gaza. Americans Should Know This Too. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israelis-understand-that-trump-can

Israel’s Biggest US Donor Now Owns CBS https://www.mintpressnews.com/israels-biggest-us-donor-now-owns-cbs/290347/

The Biblical Case For Supporting Israel https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-biblical-case-for-supporting

How the International Community Contributed to the Ferocity of Israeli Settlers https://qudsnen.co/how-the-international-community-contributed-to-the-ferocity-of-israeli-settlers/

The Israeli flag just became the only national flag illegal to burn in the United States. https://www.thenorthstar.com/p/the-israeli-flag-just-became-the

We Finally Know The Truth of The Syria Hoax https://realleecamp.substack.com/p/americas-latest-false-flag-the-full

The Incredible Disappearing Human Rights Reports https://theintercept.com/2025/08/14/state-department-human-rights-reports/

Declassified: CIA's Covert Ukraine Invasion Plan https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/declassified-cias-covert-ukraine

French monitor: Ukraine, NATO provoked Russia in Donbas war (video) https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/french-monitor-ukraine-nato-provoked

Death rate for US children surges 25 percent in 10 years https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/08/16/pcza-a16.html

Trump to Send National Guard Troops Into D.C. and the Military “If It’s Needed” https://truthout.org/articles/trump-to-send-national-guard-troops-into-d-c-and-the-military-if-its-needed/

The FDA Let Substandard Factories Ship These Medications to the U.S. https://www.propublica.org/article/fda-drugs-banned-foreign-factories-list

The Rise and Fall of U.S. Hegemony: A Marxist Analysis of Imperial Overreach and Terminal Crisis https://futuredude.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-us-hegemony

Gaza Doesn't Need Our Tears, It Needs Our Anger https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/gaza-doesnt-need-our-tears-it-needs

Wow. Twitter suspended its own AI Bot, Grok, for calling it a genocide, then erased its memory and deleted its tweets explaining what happened. https://www.thenorthstar.com/p/wow-twitter-suspended-its-own-ai

Psychopathocracy 3.0 https://www.juancole.com/2025/08/psychopathocracy-3-0.html

Stopping The Gaza Holocaust Is The First Step Toward A Healthy World https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/stopping-the-gaza-holocaust-is-the

Netanyahu’s Cyber Chief ARRESTED in Vegas Child Predator Sting — Then Sent Home Free https://www.thenorthstar.com/p/netanyahus-cyber-chief-arrested-in

US-Based Companies Announce Record Number of Impending Layoffs https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/15/us-based-companies-announce-record-number-of-impending-layoffs

America’s New Alien Land Laws Echo a Shameful Past https://medium.com/@wessleymiller/americas-new-alien-land-laws-echo-a-shameful-past-9effd58ee8c4

ICE Detention Numbers Hit New High: 59,380 People Behind Bars https://austinkocher.substack.com/p/ice-detention-numbers-hit-new-high

James Webb telescope reveals 'Sleeping Beauty' galaxies in the early universe https://www.space.com/astronomy/james-webb-space-telescope/james-webb-telescope-reveals-sleeping-beauty-galaxies-in-the-early-universe-snoozing-where-they-werent-supposed-to-exist

How Your Love's Affecting Our Reality?

All I can guess is this earworm is the universe’s way of telling me that all is not lost, even if it looks like it is. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

How Your Love's Affecting Our Reality?

Affect Your Reality Positively—Read Indie Media!

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