Counterculture

Peace and love are not conditions granted by fortune or permission.  They are choices—fierce, daily, deliberate. You do not stumble into peace like finding a coin on the sidewalk; you plant it, water it, defend it from the weeds of reaction.  Love is not a breeze that carries you—it is a direction you walk even when the wind cuts your skin. It is choosing not to mirror the chaos, but to transmute it.

Forgiveness is not a gift you give to others, not really. It is a release you offer yourself, from the weight of what cannot be undone. No one else can crawl into your memory and scrub the past clean—only you can soften its grip.

Forgiveness is an inside job, sacred and raw, done in quiet spaces where no one claps. It is not forgetting; it is choosing to remember differently, to let the wound breathe instead of rot.

Happiness does not live in tomorrow’s plans or yesterday’s photographs. It builds its home in the breath you’re taking now, in the light spilling through the window, in the small kindness unnoticed. It will not arrive with trumpets or conditions. It waits in stillness, not in achievement.

The world will offer you fear on a silver platter, resentment in velvet boxes. But peace, peace is your rebellion. Love is your revolution. Forgiveness is your alchemy. And happiness, if you’re paying attention, is already here—waiting, quietly, to be named.