.17 “fear is the path to the dark side. fear leads to anger. anger leads to hate. hate leads to suffering.”

a gentle reminder:

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today i’m going to do something a little different than usual.

this mid-month essay is about living a creative life, which i believe we all do in some way, regardless whether we think of ourselves as creative people or not.

we all have the ability to imagine. we all dream, either while asleep or awake. we all invent and ideate and, ultimately, create, whether that’s by brainstorming ideas for work, cooking meals, practicing an art, hosting a party, or even reading a book and imagining what the characters look and sound like.

we all have the ability to use our creativity to imagine the world as we want it to exist, regardless how bad the times may be.

i know how easy it is to give in to the negative feelings — to rage, to despair, to fear and sadness. and i know how much easier it is to draw fuel from those negative feelings.

but negative feelings are unsustainable fuel sources — you’ll burn out eventually, leaving you with nothing for yourself, and nothing to give. i also have to wonder whether we want a world built on those feelings.

isn’t that the whole point — that the current world is built on hate and greed? shouldn’t we want a world that’s built on truth, on community, on pleasure instead?

isn’t that what we’re fighting for?

i worry because i hear so many people say joy is resistance, but when i look around, i see so much anger. so much sadness. and that’s fair — you’re allowed to feel rage, to want to cry every time you look at the news. i do. but to allow those feelings to consume you turns you into the very thing you’re fighting against.

we’re all angry, but i’m encouraging you to imagine what a world is like that’s built on joy, that’s built on love. i’m challenging you to love the world, in all its wretchedness. because it’s all we have!

this one precious life — that’s all we have. 

i don’t want to see the people i love — everyone, i love you all, because you are all humans worthy of love — so consumed by their fear that they stop being able to see beauty, to feel the good things. that when a better world comes, they’re unable to enjoy it. that they become exactly the thing they hate.

we can’t all be optimists, and that’s why i believe it’s so important that those of us who are keep pushing. that we keep planting joy like seeds, encouraging it to sprout among those we love. you may not be an optimist, and that’s okay. because i am. and i will hold your hand and continue telling you that things are terrible now, yes, but isn’t it so beautiful to see the bud that is slowly blossoming as spring arrives? or the way the sunlight is beaming between those trees? or the way an entire community is coming together, despite their grief, despite their fear, to keep each other safe?

things can be beautiful if we make them so.

<3,

n.

p.s.

• via my lovely friend, Monica Potts: “it makes sense that queer love is one of the first things this regime started to attack, because it’s the kind of love that challenges power and builds societies and upsets the status quo and helps create equality where there was once oppression. we need that art to power us through.”

• and from the essay she references: “the world they keep building between them changes this one too.”

• and this: