A Love Letter

MY DARLINGS! <3,

It's been so long... I haven't blogged in almost a month, can you believe it???? I've put pen to paper so many times, but lately it seems inspiration has been hitting in the form of photography and not text.

Anyway, I'm just writing to say that I am TOTALLY AND IRREVOCABLY IN LOVE WITH THE HUMAN RACE.

I'd call it the conclusion of my seasonal depression (except it's 30 degrees and cloudy today, thank you very much Rochester), or say that my mood stabilizers are finally kicking in, but the dear and indisputable truth is that when I write I am always writing for people who simply cannot extricate their love of humanity from their hearts.

I am sure there are people out there who do not feel this way... people who feel betrayed or wounded by the world in ways that cannot be overcome (although, even to this I would say betrayal is not the absence of love; in fact, it is the opposite). People who witness human suffering and feel apathetic. People who do not see the fragile beauty of things around them.

I know these people exist because they are the ones running companies, booking private jets, and silencing revolutions. I can offer no explanation for this behavior, because in all aspects I have never and likely will never understand it.

All I can say is that, in the face of indifference and insensitivity, it is never a mistake to be in love with the world.

We are told a million times, in a million ways, by a million people who think they "know better", that to be in love- with a person, with a place, with life- is naive, risky, childish. This is not true. Love is the most radical action available to us. It is our only defense against the apathy that threatens to engulf us all.

All we can do is: love unhesitatingly and without remorse. And when people call us naive, stare right through their souls and decide to love them anyway- fearlessly, stupidly, absolutely- until they crumble beneath it. Refuse apathy. Reject "knowing better". When someone tries to beat the hope out of you, swing back.

I am utterly, hopelessly, ardently in love with life. Even in my darkest moments, I have always maintained this love; in fact, I think those moments have only made it grow stronger. The more isolated and desolate I feel, the more desperately I look out into this cosmos and yearn to be part of it.

Even as a child, I remember feeling like I was different from other people- less like a human, more like a changeling, an alien, a shapeshifter- and this fear was exquisitely painful but also granted me a strange gift: the liberty to live my life as if I really was some wild and untempered creature adrift on the winds of time and space, free to lie in the rain and be resolutely, embarrassingly sincere.

My love for humanity is the kind of love borne by outsiders. It is a feeling that, despite everything, I would not trade.

I hope, for anyone else who feels this way, that you would not trade it either.

So, consider this post my love letter: to the guy in Starbucks who got a massive frappucino covered in caramel drizzle, to my Uber driver who met his wife when she came to a church event on a motorcycle, to bus drivers, to people who call me "darling" or "sweetheart", to flight attendants miming that safety lesson thing before the plane takes off, to artists, to revolutionaries, to thunderstorms, to books, to people who feel invisible.

And to you, my beloved readers, always.

xoxo, riley