See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

by Valarie Kaur

Your breathlessness is a sign of your bravery. It means you are awake to what’s happening right now: The world is in transition.

This book, written in the throes of all that struggle and hopeful anticipation, is about how to labor with joy.

The hot winds cannot touch you, you are shielded by love.

Any theology that teaches that God will torture the people in front of you in the afterlife creates the imaginative space for you to do so yourself on earth.

But he was brave, and bravery was a choice.

Grief is the price of love. Loving someone means that one day, there will be grieving.

Mother Teresa once said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” And so, begin with one. Can you choose one person to practice wondering about? Can you listen to the story they have to tell?

The heart is a muscle: The more you use it, the stronger it becomes.

You don’t need to know people in order to grieve with them. You grieve with them in order to know them.

If you “see no stranger” and choose to love all people, then you must fight for anyone who is suffering from the harm of injustice. This was the path of the warrior-sage: The warrior fights, the sage loves. Revolutionary love.

Law school is not designed to produce revolutionaries who overturn institutions of power but to initiate new generations of elites into how power works.

I asked. “I didn’t know that,” he said. He

In all our various creative labors—making a living, raising a family, building a nation—there are moments that are so painful, we want to give up. But inside searing pain and encroaching numbness, we might also find the depths of our courage, hear our deepest wisdom, and transition to the other side.

“Oh, my love,” I whispered into his ear. “You are beloved in the world. You are strong and smart and loving and brave.”

Joy returns us to everything that is good and beautiful and worth fighting for. In joy, we see even darkness with new eyes.

In your

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was so joyful to be with her.