Survival is an act of defiance

Back in 2016, when Trump was first elected, so many people around me were despondent and telling me that they should just kill themselves before the rest of the world did it for them. Why should they bother going on, in a world that just wanted them dead anyway?

This is why I wrote Strategies to Live, especially the final verse:

In the long run everything will be fine
It will just be a matter of time, in
Twelve billion years this will all be gone

In the meantime, please1 try to survive
The world is better with you alive
Outliving him is a reason to go on

It took me unti 2021 to finally release it on an album, and I perhaps didn’t do as good a job of it as I could have since I felt like it was no longer relevant. Now that it’s relevant again I end every set that I can with it.

I do not want anyone to comply in advance with a few vocal shitheads who don’t care about any sort of humanity. I want people in my life to survive and thrive, even if it has to be out of spite for the absolute monsters.

The worst of them are going to die sometime soon, whether it be by the actions of others or just plain by old age. I want to be there to see it happen.

I feel frequent low points these days. I get it. What keeps me going is the knowledge that I will outlive these fuckers. If I were to die it’d just be something they celebrate if they even hear about it at all. I’m not going to give them that pleasure.

Please don’t comply in advance, or try to convince others that they should either. The best way to hurt them is to continue to live our best lives.

Living is an act of defiance, and a goddamn fucking important one.

💜