To love is an act of rebellion.

In this world of us, them, borders, walls, autonomy, chains, openness, lies, the act of loving is an act in defiance of all we are conditioned to do and be.

To love does not mean just to love romantically. To love means to love those that impact you: family, friends, neighbors. To love means to love people and animals, all creatures with the capacity for pain and love. To love means to love all others, despite their perceived “otherism.” To love means to love all.

To love also means, most importantly, to love yourself. To love means to be true to yourself. To love means to search for your own personal happiness at all costs and pursue it relentlessly, despite what you’re told or how you’ve been conditioned to stop.

To love means to be better. In a world where “they” don’t want us to be better, to love is the ultimate act of rebellion.

Who are “they”? The creators of modern society. The heads of state. The greedy and wealthy.

“They” are the ones that have built the system of perceived – but false – freedom. “They” are the ones who can’t think beyond their system of bills and debts and jobs and buildings and mortgages and insurance and monogamy and white picket fences and bondage and cowardice.

In a world where everyone is the same, and everyone needs to continue to be the same for their systems continue working, to love means to be different.

To love, unfortunately, means to do what others aren’t. To love is to reject the hatred that necessarily comes with forming small unions. To love is to accept that while perceived personal similarities seem to form bonds, they actually form ruptures, among those who who are perceived different.

To love doesn’t mean to be silent. To love, in this day and age, means to fight.

To love doesn’t mean giving up your personhood. It doesn’t mean relinquishing your body. It doesn’t mean laying down before those that would harm you.

To love means accepting that the world as it’s been built for us can’t continue.

To love means to ignore those that would question your love of self, of humankind, of animalkind.

To love means to ignore the silly answers to the silly questions, the silly solutions to the silly problems.
To love means to stop parsing the silly words.

To love means to reject the silly distractions that have been created for us to look the other way.

To love means to stop watching the silly television. To love means to stop reading the idiotic articles. To love means to use social media as a means of human connection and if you can’t, to love means to give it up. To love means to focus on what matters in the world – love – and change and growth.

To love – to rebel – means to understand that nothing really matters except love. Except, as the world stands now, rebellion.

To love means to reject the narrative we’re given. To love means to decline to believe that black teenagers deserve to be shot, that Muslim store-owners deserve to be terrorized, that women deserve to be raped.

To love is to understand that it’s a fallacy that good people don’t do bad things. To love is to realize the hallmark of those that shape history isn’t good versus evil. It’s strength versus weakness.

It’s the strength to stand up for love.

Good people often do bad things. Strong people do not.

To love is to be honest with yourself and others.

To love is to unchain.