To those who think that their desires take precedence over the well-being of others:
I was going to say fuck you, but I decided that was exactly the wrong way to go about things. No matter how much you enrage me, no matter how much I want to pay you back in exact measure for what harm, grave harm, you have done to those I love, no matter how much I wish to scream at you, rail at you, introduce you to my fist, call each and every one of you out as cowards and fools for hiding behind the anonymity of a grey face or of the internet, I will not. You think the world works this way, you see, and it is the source of your problems. You think that violence will solve things, that beating down different and dissident ideas will win the argument, that insulting and threatening and belittling people is the proper way of debate.
You are wrong.
But if I answer you in kind, if I threaten and belittle and mock as you do, I become as you are, I validate your systems of argument, of oppression, of right forged only by might. And I will not do this.
Instead, I will do what you do not dare to do: I will love. I will open myself to your slings and arrows, and reach out, and comfort, and connect. I will hold to others, and hope, and laugh. In this world you think to make of violence, I will walk unshielded. And though I will be wounded, though I know I will be hurt, I will find a companionship you do not know, and that you may even fear. I will find love and friendship built on respect, and kindness, and recognition that our differences are things to learn from and cherish. I will change the world by being a way the world as you know it cannot tolerate. And others will see. Others will see laughter, and love, and friendship, the great joys of life that cannot come in your world of violence. They will see what joy can be, and they will start to walk these same paths. Others have walked before me, and I follow in their footsteps, and still others shall walk in mine.
I will not beat you; I will not vanquish you; I will not look down on a bloody field and claim victory. I will transform you. I will make the field full of flowers and laughter. I will open my heart and arms to the hurting. And I will ask others to do the same - and they will. And together, we will make the world we want to be in.
So rejoice for now in others' pain; it is your own. Take a moment to shelter in another's fear; it is your own. You can place your own falseness on others, but it will not last, and love will bury it deep.
For me, I will love.
