Love Always Wins

the making of peace

I am writing the message that I need to hear right now.

It is tempting to believe, in this breakneck, belligerent era, that Hate may win the day. After all, we have created systems— political, economic, religious, technological— that encourage swift, staunch judgments. Our undue emphasis on productivity and certainty has bastardized our relationship with Time and eroded our capacity for ambiguity.

In terms of material outcomes, our hubris and our inability to unify may well be our downfall. We might fall victim to poetic justice as our creations— social media, artificial intelligence, the 24-hour news cycle, single-use plastic, capitalism, assault rifles, religious doctrine, totalitarianism— magnify the worst in us.

But in terms of spiritual inevitability, Love must always conquer Hate. To me, this is a phenomenon as predictable as gravity— which is why we must infuse all our creations with the force of Love, so as to protect ourselves from our own self-destructive instincts.

Love always wins, because Hate needs an object or opponent to survive, whereas Love is universal and unconditional and self-sustaining.

Hate anchors itself to the time, place, and dynamic in which it is instantiated, whereas Love— however personal and specific— nevertheless attaches itself to that eternal spring which renders it boundless and indestructible. Hate is a weed that grows as an invasive species in a particular ecosystem. Love is the cypress tree that stands not only in its specific soil, but also feels itself bound to every cypress tree that has ever burst from the earth.

Both Hate and Love demand something from us.

What distinguishes their demands?

Hate demands of our Ego, whereas Love demands of our Soul. Hate extracts a scant commodity, whereas Love activates a renewable resource from within us.

It is possible to Hate anything.

With sufficient resolve, we can learn to Hate puppies or pizza or sunshine. But Hatred takes work— the kind that depletes and requires perpetual kindling.

It is possible to Love anything.

Love also takes work— the kind that enriches. With sufficient resolve, I can Love Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and Andrew Tate and any number of people (usually men) whose actions offend my very being. To Love them does not mean to tolerate their cruelty or to passively accept their dominion. To Love them is to allow my capacity for compassion to conquer the bellow of their wound.

If I truly believe that Love is medicinal— and I do— then I cannot fail to show Love to those who, in their desire to inflict pain upon others, are so obviously in pain themselves. For this is another of Love’s virtues: Love is vast and fortified enough to hold complexity, whereas Hate either barrels through or buckles under contradiction.

I can protest, fight, resist, oppose, and unequivocally condemn while maintaining the frequency of Love. By refusing to allow Hate to mute my ability to Love, I showcase Love’s indomitable power. Love acknowledges Hate’s tantrum with the clear-eyed compassion and unwavering resolve of a disciplining parent.

As expressions or embodiments of Love, how might we walk forward into this fragile, fearful world? I believe there are (at least) three answers to this question.

1.     Practice Discernment

It is helpful to call Love and Hatred by their true names, and no others.

For instance, religious zeal often masquerades as Love by conscripting Love as an excuse for forced conversion and subordination. Insecurity, paired with a will to control, often appropriates Love for its abusive aims. We must never mistake control for Love, particularly when it is the imperative of people in power.

Likewise, Hate is a catch-all term— and a lazy, anemic one at that. In fact, I’m not sure that Hatred even exists. When we observe Hate, what we’re actually observing is a deeper, more interesting emotion that is past its expiration date. Hate is fear or anger or shame gone sour.

My wise friend Chloé Valdary— founder of Theory of Enchantment— calls upon us to look past our defenses and see the wounds beneath them; wounds that will always be more concrete and edifying than a defensive layer of hatred.

2.     Embrace Paradox

Human beings are built to survive. Our snap judgments, inherent biases, and simplicity of thought have served that survival. Therefore, we can graciously thank those instincts as we glide past them into deeper and more dynamic modes of engaging with one another and with life.

But here’s the drawback: our System 1 minds can scarcely tolerate friction and will seek to reduce it whenever possible, by choosing A or B, Good or Bad, This or That, Yes or No, You or Me.

If our minds encourage black-and-white thinking, our political and media systems amplify that thinking. My friend Tobias Rose-Stockwell writes brilliantly about the corrosive effects of social media on our thinking brains in his recent book Outrage Machine. Our wiring— the wiring we’ve inherited, and the wiring we’ve created— primes us for narrow-minded, impulsive thinking.

But the journey of enlightenment and actualization requires that we hold dissonance and friction in a healthy, integrated way. When harnessed mindfully, friction is a fiery creative force that provides warmth and illumination. We must learn to hold friction against our bodies in ways that warm but do not scorch. That is our lifelong tango.

In this combative era, we can resist black-and-white thinking by refusing to conflate a swirl of ideas. Instead, we must spread these ideas out, accordion-like, to examine each at face value. It is difficult to hold this accordion without fearing censure or the distortion (willful or otherwise) of our stated beliefs. It is far easier to echo the rallying cry of one faction than it is to expand and hold the nuances of both.

But these fraught and fractured times demand that we slow down, listen, reflect, and above all resist the urge to collapse our (maddening, astounding) human complexity into reductive, simplistic ideas for the sake of our own ease, comfort, and desire to belong.  

In simple terms: our social media networks, news sources, and community members will entreat us to declare our allegiance to a static point of view. Faced with this pressure, we must recall Love’s capacity to withstand contradiction. We must strive for a multifaceted perspective. We must strive for a perspective that exhibits “opposition without hatred,” as Mark Rylance eloquently observed during the 2017 Academy Awards. We must strive for a perspective that asks us to grow in order to meet it.

3.     Peacemaking: The “Making” of Peace

People are suffering all over the world. We can come to their aid in traditional ways, by donating to and volunteering with organizations that advocate for peace in the Middle East. We can educate ourselves and verify our sources. We can check in on our Palestinian and Israeli friends, our Muslim and Jewish friends, and any tender citizen of this world who feels this collective ache.

(Seriously, I cannot explain how much it means to hear from a friend.)

But we can also act closer to home in the name of peace; particularly when we feel so impotent and inundated.

Can we be softer and gentler in our daily lives?

Can we observe the critical thoughts that spring into our minds, and reckon with them kindly?

Can we make generous assumptions of ourselves and others?

Above all: can we counter humanity’s most glaring design flaws (cruelty, callousness, compartmentalization) with its most sacred birthright: Art?  

Elie Wiesel said it best: “The opposite of Hate isn’t Love; it’s Indifference.” In my view, the Opposite of Hate isn’t Love; it’s Creation. I believe that our souls yearn towards Art like plants stretch towards sunlight.

Whenever the ills of the world threaten to overwhelm me, I recall what I love best about humanity and try to emulate that quality in the Art I create. Creation is a portal that ushers any sensation into its fullest expression… and then… into transformation. Art and Beauty— like Love— are vivifying, purifying forces.

In this moment, Life has placed a lot of feeling at our feet.

Our task is not to look away, not to clench our hearts into numbness, and not to allow our true feelings to calcify into something resembling Hatred. We must believe in our own fortitude, our own resilience, and our own capacity for creative alchemy.

Our homework is to dance the rage, paint the sorrow, scribble the fury, sew the heartbreak, chant the confusion. As my remarkable therapist says: let Art be the purge that expurgates these feelings from our bodies.

And whenever we find ourselves short of inspiration, let the best of Humanity be our muse. These eras of unimaginable grief release a level of unsurpassed poetry from the mouths of those who, despite all provocation, dare to continue to Love.

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