Chante Chicano: Springtime Love Is On My Mind

Daniel Stange de Acatl

Posted May 14, 2026

I won’t forget and I won’t regret. To love and to have lost, is better than to never have loved at all. Fewer people are celebrating long life-time relationships like I have with my wife now entering our 28^th year. So many sad stories of separation and many of them are beyond our control these days. Economic and political stress has badly assaulted the sanctity of marriage and the appreciation to endure through hardships and working on our personality defects.

It takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a mediator to help couples overcome some of the arguments and different points of views about what does our relationship mean. Men and women, boys and girls, fathers and mothers, or even just friends can face incredible odds to agree to disagree. We use the term often to dispel the dispute, but even when we agree to disagree, we walk away feeling frustrated. Our social conditioning works to justify our actions and most of the time it was a bad decision that started it all.

If you can step outside of yourself briefly to make a different observation, the natural world can illustrate a practical solution.

American society has pushed people away from any real accountability or even the acknowledgment of what we did. When the easy way out is always fight or flight. The easy answer is seldom the best option. Although our modern lessons are generally deduced from laws of physics and the path of least resistance should push us away from conflict. Yet, human ignorance will much rather seek validation than surrender.

The real issue is because we are constantly judging the situation in terms of right and wrong, good and bad. Love and hate are not opposites, they both propel us into action. Fear is what makes us stop. Fear is what creates our barriers and our defenses. But a worldview divided with Love and fear has been as challenging as a worldview between good and evil. Between life and death. This perception has us molded in conflict and we have become so accustomed to the struggle, that we almost cannot define ourselves without diagnosing the pain.

If you can step outside of yourself briefly to make a different observation, the natural world can illustrate a practical solution. Everything has two qualities like a front and a back that we could label love and fear. Still, everything is in relationship with something else at any given moment. That relationship is either moving and transforming or it is stuck and it remains locked. Like the difference between a river and a lake. So, another term we could use to describe them is animated and inanimate.

When we take this approach to discovery and change our attitude about what we are looking at or dealing with, we are able to resolve, respond or react without a personal sense of loss or gain. It is less judgmental and certainly not so offensive. Either it moves you or it does not. And as always things are both, for example a television is inanimate but the images on the screen are incredibly animated. They actually have a great capacity to grab your attention and certainly have converted many of us into couch potatoes. Becoming ourselves inanimate and getting stuck.

Same can be seen in our personal relationships. Every relationship is between two individuals. One of those individuals can even be inanimate, like your relationship with your phone. However, instead of viewing the relationship by diagnosis of what is good or bad about it, you can ask, what is moving and what is holding back? What are the responsibilities that you are taking? How are you refusing to transform?

It’s easy to get stuck in your own development, especially as an elder that is taking accountability and fits into society. Nobody that has gained a strong sense of self-determination wants to redevelop their whole persona. Yet, as time moves through us, we do transform. We should never stop learning. Isolation is also not a healthy response. Although challenging our relationships and transforming our belief systems are not fun filled activities. Sometimes life will compel us to face it.

So as the Spring air is filling your mind with seeds of chance. As the society around us is completely transforming. Some good and some bad. Let’s try to take a new lens that actually is based on the way our ancestors viewed nature. Everything is in relationship and we can observe them in motion or stationary. No need to judge the world, no fear that we cannot face. But, finding what moves us and taking the step to be honest with our loved ones about where we get stuck. Usually, the way to get things moving again is right there, those unspoken words. See them as opportunities for growth in the relationship’s that mean something to you; even the relationship you have with yourself.

Danny Stange de Acatl is a Denver Native and Cultural activist that serves his community on various levels.