Do you know what you believe in, what kind of world we all deserve? Have you told anyone? Well-meaning as we are, I wonder often about the way language can so easily become a substitute for an embodied commitment. We update our vocabulary, reach for more politicized words, adopt new terms, and self-righteously signal the urgency and rigor we have yet to cultivate in our own actions. And of course, the language is accurate. The stakes are, in fact, as high as terms like “settler colonialism” and “fascism” and “ecological collapse” would suggest. But then what kind of responsibility do we have to the language we use, if we dare to wield it honestly, with full conviction? 

The distance between what we believe and how we fight for it isn’t entirely our fault. We’ve been stripped of the resources and agency to build, shape, and live fully dignified lives ourselves, much less build and sustain that degree of collective self-determination across borders, for all of us, together. Such is the nature of late-stage capitalism and imperialism and all of their brazen barbarisms. But how disempowered are we that our political vision for ourselves and for each other seems relegated to a landscape of belief and faith so far removed from our material reality? How often are our words braver than we are?

We can believe all sorts of big, life-affirming things. We shout our commitments to the sky when we’re in a big enough crowd and whisper our riskiest faiths to each other in small, trusted circles. We can believe and believe and believe—and for what? Does it matter what you believe in if you won’t fight for it to be true? Who are you brave enough to become in order to first engage in, and then win, that fight? May our love be brave enough to demand more. We cannot build a better world without becoming braver people. Is it not our responsibility to ourselves and to each other, to become brave enough to win?