For a long time, my main motto has been (and is) “Love Conquers All”. Lizzi’s words speak to me. They resonate. Lizzi can also be found at https://summat2thinkon.wordpress.com/
THE INTOXICATING DRAW OF LOVE
7:15 AM
This last year has been hard. What we all need is to relearn the meaning of love wins. We can begin right now by using the love wins hashtag liberally.
On VProud there is a stunning video and conversation called, “Love has no race. Love has no disability. Love has no gender. Love has no age. Does your love defy labels?” It is easy to fall in love with this beautiful video, and we did so immediately. Then along came writer Lizzi Rogers who reflected on the topic of love winning so beautifully and thoughtfully, that we fell in love with the concept all over again. In the age of social media where ugliness rears its head in the unlikeliest of places, it feels good to fall in love with love, to define and redefine love wins meaning everyone wins, and yes, to even use the love wins hashtag with wild abandon. We can’t say enough how much this video and this essay both win. Take a look and see for yourself, and feel free to hashtag your approval.
—The VProud Team
Why It Matters That #LoveWins
By Lizzi Rogers for VProud
Nothing seems to work these days across social media if it’s not trendy. Even anti-trendy (for there seem to be as many stalwart jumpers onto dissenting bandwagons against the bandwagons which were already jumped upon for whichever fad has most recently gone viral) can prove almost as effective at starting discussions.
For every #PumpkinSpiceEverything or #RedCups, there is an equally earnest and opposing force trying to make their point above the clamor.
The marketing is intensely clever, and I should think that for commercial purposes, any exposure is good exposure and a trending tag is equivalent to money in the bank.
But in the end, it’s all just noise. Isn’t it?
Thing is, there’s a reason hashtags go viral. Someone, somewhere along the way, creates a tag which sums up a concept which is deeply and fervently held by a large group of people. This large group, though disparate in their geography, are nonetheless united by their deep-held conviction. The hashtag allows them to begin operating as a collective – to belong to a group – to pin their colors to the mast and effectively ‘march’ with those of a similar outlook.
We’ve seen #JeSuisCharlie, #BlackLivesMatter, and lately #TerrorismHasNoReligion.
Each tag which has suddenly spiked in popularity and trended across the world has been attached to some cataclysmic social event, snowballing as people click through updates to see what’s going on, and add their voice to the crowd.
There’s a darker side though, and while I hope we can all agree #BlackLives[doVERYMUCH]Matter, there are currents of unrest in the depths, due to a seemingly supportive alternative #AllLivesMatter (they do) which fails to take into account (because how could it?) the struggle of being black in a world still governed by white privilege.
People (when fervent) quickly become divided, reactionary, and argumentative; becoming lost in the semantics and implied context of a particular hashtag rather than uniting in the places which are shared, and remaining committed to the cause.
Such arguments typically cause such furor online that the collective is splintered into factions and the message becomes lost amongst infighting (the very incidence of which, alienates others from joining the cause, and results in worldwide nose-raising and an acute onset of ‘Judgysaurus Rex’).
The to-and-fro was no less when the #LoveWins hashtag went viral in June 2015, after gay marriage was legalized across the States. Previous to that (and ongoingly so) it was used by people who want to share stories of love – all love – and give voice and a ‘hook’ to the overriding concept that on the whole, in spite of how it may appear on the face of it (or in the news), love really DOES win.
It’s a beautiful thing, and the stories flagged up by this hashtag – puppies rescued from sewers; charitable efforts by children to contribute to worthy causes; triumphs of the heart and soul, and every instance that people behave in a manner which is FOR each other – develop connection and build community. Each one of them is a small but important occasion for celebrating that strongest of human emotions.
And we love love, don’t we? Every finer part of our human world is pervaded by love: songs, literature, art…and we are reminded that everywhere there is a human, there is the capacity for love to occur in some form.
We are all so much more alike than different, and in joining together to celebrate this, by pinning our heart-spangled colours to the mast and sharing stories of heart and positivity, we remind each other that ideally, we would prefer good to prevail.
Whichever other causes we follow, or however we choose to live, I hope that everyone will find ways to engage with those wonderful aspects of the human spirit which provide opportunities to bond.
The truth is we’re always stronger together, and in the face of times of increasing upheaval, we need to reconnect with our fellow humans and remember the flicker of kinship within us all.
We need to know that #LoveWins.
About the author: Lizzi Rogers is a Deep Thinker, a Truth-Teller, and a seeker of Good Things. She’s also silly, irreverent, and tries to write as beautifully as possible. She sends glitterbombs and gathers people around her — building community wherever she can. A founder member of Sisterwives and #1000Speak, she hosts the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop each weekend and tries to #BeReal as often as possible. Find Lizzi on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest and join Lizzi’s honest conversations on VProud.
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