Imagine looking at a sunset over the hills, the ones with different colours and shades. Now, imagine getting genuinely angry because the person next to you prefers the pink hues while you prefer the purple. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? To be offended by someone else’s appreciation of beauty? 

Yet, that is exactly what happens when we hate people over how they love. 

We take a human being’s identity, their truth, their choice of who they want to love, and we try to extinguish it. We treat love as if someone else’s happiness is somehow taking away from our own. 

Why? 

Why spend your life hating because of love? Why does the sight of two men or two women loving each other and building a life together feel so threatening? Why does the existence of a transgender woman or man in society confuse people so much that they respond with anger? 

The massive amount of time and energy that people spend hating love that has absolutely nothing to do with them is staggering to me. 

Humans have already found so many “reasons” to divide themselves. Race, nationality, religion, class. By turning love into the same battlefield, we lose the one thing that is actually supposed to fix the other problems. 

If we can’t even accept the way someone else finds companionship, how are we ever supposed to solve the “bigger” issues like racial inequity or global conflict? If we cannot handle two people holding hands, we will never have the emotional maturity to establish peace between nations. 

As a girl, who just turned 17, these questions are frightening. 

It makes me think about if we’ll ever live in a world where ‘love is just love’. 

I sit in classrooms learning about social cohesion, human rights, and “positive peace”. I write definitions. I analyze case studies. 

But I am still left wondering if these ideas will ever exist outside my notebook.

I don’t know how to undo generations of homophobia, or rewrite every law. I can not control what people are taught and what people think. 

But, I know one thing. 

We need to stop hating individuals. 

Not “communities.” Not “groups.” 

Just people. 

Maybe the change we are looking for does not need to happen in global conferences, but at individual levels. 


If enough individuals decide to stop hating other individuals, something shifts. Classrooms feel safer. Families feel less tense. Conversations become possible. When conversations become possible, change becomes possible.

I do not know if this will fix everything. But I know that hate has never healed anything.

And I know that love, when left alone, has never harmed anyone.

If you cannot find it in yourself to actively support, then at the very least, at least do no harm.

Just Smile.

Let people love, and learn to let love be love, regardless of one’s preferences. 

Because, I promise, no matter which colors someone prefers in that sunset, the sky remains just as beautiful for everyone.

The following article is written completely from the author’s perspective. It is intended to share a personal reflection on human connection and it is not meant to offend anyone.

Written by Priyanshi P, a journalist and editor in chief at The Woodstocker