Embracing personal and social love
I am privileged to be here—and with privilege comes responsibility. In the spirit of the season, I resolve to redouble my efforts to help out those indebted, poor, or otherwise disadvantaged by the lottery of birth. I resolve to spread out my arms as wide as possible to reach out and help others, because I cannot be fully happy if one of my neighbours is unhappy.
During my quest to love I will also endeavor to make love possible—because if we have hateful institutions, love is not possible. I mean institutions such as racism, discrimination, or economic oppression. I am not naïve enough to think it sufficient to love as an individual. My individual love is ineffectual if it does not touch these hateful institutions.
No matter how much you love a person being paid minimum wage, you are not going to change their life without changing the institution that takes advantage of them. Your act of love, in this case, may mean working towards a minimum livable wage. No matter how much you love a person ripped off by a temp agency, you’re not going to change their life by just loving them individually. You have to work towards the abolition of temp agencies. In the same way, if you love an indebted student, you have to work towards abolishing student debt.
We have to make love possible, not just at a personal level, but at a social level as well. Institutions are extensions of individuals and we can’t be loving towards each other if hateful institutions don’t allow us to love wholly.
I have resolved to use my privilege to love both the individual and social person. I believe many of our personal problems have social causes and if that is so, the solutions must also be social.
– Nestor Pereira