What Is Love? Part 2: Love In The Active World
In Part 1, I put the question on the table:
What is love?
Not the slogan version.
Not the romantic version.
Not the version sold back to us through songs, movies, politics, branding, or sentiment.
I wanted to look deeper. I wanted to look at love through Scripture, through ancient wisdom, through the Egyptian concept of Ma’at, through Sumerian ideas of sacred life and renewal, and through what I have come to believe after living the life I have lived.
My answer was simple, but it was not small.
True love is faith in the Creator.
All-encompassing faith.
Faith so complete it cannot stay locked inside the self.
Faith that overflows.
Faith that becomes mercy.
Faith that becomes protection.
Faith that becomes truth.
Faith that becomes courage.
Faith that becomes justice.
Faith that becomes life.
But there is another question that has to follow.
Once we define love, how does love show itself in the active world?
How does love move through pain?
How does love survive hatred?
How does love work inside a person who has every reason to become bitter?
How does love become visible in a world filled with alien faces, broken systems, dangerous people, false masks, and wounds that do not always announce themselves?
That is where this becomes personal.
Because our lives are filled with memories.
Some good.
Some bad.
In my case, some horrifying.
As I have revealed in previous posts, I grew up in Miami during the 1980s and 1990s. That Miami was beautiful, dangerous, strange, electric, poor, violent, alive, and complicated. It had sunlight sharp enough to make poverty look cinematic. It had palm trees standing over streets where children still learned fear too early. It had South Beach glamour on one side and survival on the other. It had music, laughter, heat, concrete, police sirens, corner stores, schools, churches, and faces that seemed to come from every possible world.
I was poor.
Very poor.
I was also abused.
I was beaten and whipped more times than I can remember. I thought it was normal. I thought I deserved it. That is one of the quiet horrors of childhood abuse. The child often does not understand that something wrong is happening to him. The child thinks the pain is part of the order of the world. The child thinks the violence has a reason. The child thinks the adult must be right because the adult has power.
The blood coming from broken skin that tore under the burning and punishing lashes of an extension cord or tree branch was the result of the hate of a broken father.
A father who hated me.
My existence.
My smile.
My love for life.
There are sentences a person never expects to write about his own childhood. That is one of them.
But I have to write it because it is true.
And because truth matters.
I was a little boy with an afro and tattered clothes hiding bloody wounds. Underneath every laugh with my friends were wounds festering under fabric. Underneath the normal childhood moments were marks that no child should have to carry. Underneath the smile was pain. Underneath the play was survival. Underneath the schoolwork was a body that had already learned what cruelty felt like.
But here is the part that still amazes me.
Though my skin was broken, my heart and soul never were.
My love for my father never dimmed.
That may be hard for some people to understand. It is still hard for me to understand sometimes. But I believe that is where love first revealed itself to me as something greater than emotion.
Because emotion alone could not have survived that.
Natural affection alone could not have survived that.
A child’s ordinary love alone could not have survived the hatred, the blood, the lashes, the fear, and the confusion.
Something else was there.
God was there.
The Creator was there.
Love was there.
Not love as weakness. Not love as denial. Not love as pretending evil is good. Not love as excusing abuse. Not love as silence in the face of harm.
Love as divine preservation.
Love as spiritual oxygen.
Love as the thing that kept my heart from becoming what had been done to me.
That was my first experience of love as all-encompassing faith in the Creator.
I did not have the language for it then.
I do now.
Miami And The World Of Alien Faces
I carried this undying passion for life into the streets of Miami as a boy.
The people I met growing up were like faces that were alien to me. Some wore masks. Some of these faces were blatantly full of murder and deceit. Some people smiled with danger behind their eyes. Some people moved through the world like they had already made peace with darkness. Some people were charming, but the charm felt like a trapdoor. Some people were funny, but the humor had knives in it. Some people had the look of people who had seen too much, done too much, lost too much, or become too comfortable around destruction.
That was Miami too.
Not just the beaches.
Not just the postcards.
Not just the music and the colors and the food and the swagger and the rising sun over South Beach.
Miami was also a classroom of survival.
So when I survived the beatings and the hate of a broken father, I was forced to carry those scars into that world of alien faces called Miami.
I had to learn people.
I had to learn danger.
I had to learn silence.
I had to learn when to speak and when to watch.
I had to learn that not everyone who laughs with you loves you.
I had to learn that not everyone who stands near you is safe.
I had to learn that some faces are masks, some words are bait, and some rooms carry the temperature of evil before anyone says a thing.
But I also had fun.
That is important too.
Pain did not get the whole story.
I built happy memories.
I laughed with friends.
I found joy where I could.
I held on to those memories instead of the unrelenting pain I was exposed to.
That was not denial. That was survival with light still inside it.
I had love.
Love from God.
He was always there for me.
He helped me. He supplied me with strength and wisdom. Ancient wisdom. Wisdom that allowed me to persevere. Wisdom that allowed me to see past the immediate pain and understand that my life was still worth something. Wisdom that taught me that I was not the hatred directed at me. I was not the brokenness of the man who hurt me. I was not the blood on my skin. I was not the poverty around me. I was not the fear in the room.
I was a child of the Creator.
And that meant I had a future.
Love As Knowledge, Discipline, And Survival
This is where love became active.
It did not come to me as a greeting card.
It came as endurance.
It came as intelligence.
It came as discipline.
It came as hunger to learn.
It came as a refusal to be destroyed.
Faith pushed me not only to go to school, but to rise as a shining star. My faith poured out of me and into my studies. So I learned. I gained the knowledge I needed to live in a world of alien faces. To thrive in that world. To interpret that world. To understand power. To understand records. To understand systems. To understand lies. To understand how people hide things in plain sight. To understand how truth can be buried, and how a person trained to watch can dig it back out.
The little boy with an afro and tattered clothes hiding bloody wounds thrived.
That is not a small thing.
That is not motivational-poster language.
That is spiritual warfare.
Because every child who survives abuse has to decide, knowingly or unknowingly, what to do with the pain. Some bury it. Some repeat it. Some become numb. Some become cruel. Some become addicted to chaos. Some spend a lifetime trying to win love from people incapable of giving it. Some confuse intensity for intimacy because intensity is what they learned first.
But by the grace of God, I did not become hatred.
I did not become revenge.
I did not become jealousy.
I did not become a victim.
I carried light with me into adulthood.
I never put it down.
That is love in the active world.
Not love as something soft and passive.
Love as a living force that interrupts the inheritance of pain.
Love Does Not Mean There Was No Damage
I want to be clear about something.
When I say I had love, I am not saying the abuse did not matter.
It mattered.
When I say I was not a victim, I am not saying I was not harmed.
I was harmed.
When I say my heart and soul were not broken, I am not saying there were no scars.
There were scars.
There are wounds that memory does not file away neatly. There are things the body remembers before the mind does. There are fears that arrive in adulthood carrying the scent of childhood rooms. There are moments when a person realizes the past is not past because the nervous system still has old weather inside it.
But love gave me something pain could not steal.
Love gave me orientation.
Love gave me a north star.
Love gave me enough faith in the Creator to believe that what happened to me was not the total meaning of me.
That is one of the deepest functions of love.
Love tells the wounded person: your wound is real, but it is not your name.
Love tells the abused child: what happened to you was evil, but you are not evil.
Love tells the survivor: you do not have to become what hurt you.
Love tells the man: you can tell the truth without handing your soul over to bitterness.
That is not easy.
But it is possible.
And in my life, it was possible because God was there.
Love And The Watchdog
This love carried me through countless challenges as a man.
It also shaped my profession.
I poured this love into my work as a government watchdog. It allowed me to have a hand in bringing justice to this world. Not as a government official. Not as a member of law enforcement. Not as someone carrying a badge or a title issued by the state.
I became the watcher of those tasked by the law to watch.
That is a lonely profession.
People talk about justice in public, but not everyone wants justice when justice starts knocking on doors. Not everyone wants records examined. Not everyone wants documents read closely. Not everyone wants names connected. Not everyone wants power mapped. Not everyone wants the hidden machinery brought into daylight.
A watchdog learns this quickly.
You can be hated by people who do not know you.
You can be ignored by people who benefit from your work.
You can be ridiculed by people who would never survive five minutes carrying the burden you carry.
You can be isolated.
You can be dismissed.
You can be called obsessed by people who have mistaken comfort for wisdom.
You can do the work, bring receipts, shine light into dark places, and still find yourself standing alone in the room after everyone else has taken what they needed from your labor.
But I thrive when lonely.
That may sound strange, but it is true.
It is as if I was tailor-made to carry the burden of watching the watchers.
Maybe that came from childhood. Maybe the boy who had to read faces in Miami became the man who could read institutions. Maybe the child who learned that danger often smiles became the researcher who understands that corruption often wears a suit. Maybe the child who saw that adults could lie while holding power became the man who looks for the document trail behind the official story.
Maybe God was preparing me before I knew I was being prepared.
That is not to romanticize suffering.
Suffering is not good because it hurts.
But God can take what was meant to destroy a person and turn it into a tool for protection, discernment, and service.
That is love in the active world.
Love does not only comfort.
Love trains.
Love equips.
Love sharpens.
Love sends.
Watching The Watchers As An Act Of Love
Some people may not think of watchdog work as love.
They may think of love as hugs, kindness, family, romance, charity, or forgiveness.
And yes, love can be all of those things.
But love can also be investigation.
Love can be public records.
Love can be a complaint filed against corruption.
Love can be a document read line by line when everyone else is too tired to care.
Love can be refusing to let powerful people exploit the weak behind layers of process, prestige, and legal fog.
Love can be watching the watchers.
Because justice is not separate from love.
Truth is not separate from love.
Protection is not separate from love.
If love is faith in the Creator overflowing into the world, then watchdog work can be one of its forms. Not because it is glamorous. It is not. Not because it brings applause. Often, it does not. Not because it makes life easier. It rarely does.
It is love because it says the world should not be left to predators.
It says the vulnerable matter.
It says public trust matters.
It says corruption is not just a policy problem. It is a moral injury.
It says the people tasked with power must be watched because unchecked power becomes a beast with table manners.
That is why I have continued doing this work even when hated, alone, thankless, and unrecognized.
Love does not always look like being embraced.
Sometimes love looks like standing in the cold with a lantern while everyone else is inside pretending the dark is normal.
Breaking The Curse
But the most important place love became active in my life was not public.
It was private.
It was fatherhood.
I have also been able to share this love with my children.
Being a father is a responsibility I hold in every cell of my being. I do not treat fatherhood as a title. I treat it as a sacred trust. A child enters the world vulnerable. A child studies your face before they understand your words. A child learns God, safety, authority, discipline, affection, and self-worth through the environment you create around them.
That is a terrifying and beautiful responsibility.
I know what it means for a father’s hatred to enter a child’s body.
I know what it means for a child to think blood from broken skin is somehow deserved.
I know what it means to love someone who hurts you.
I know what it means to walk through the world with wounds hidden under clothes.
So I made a choice.
Instead of passing down the lineage of hatred and pain, I gave my children the love I gained through faith in the Creator.
I shared that love with every word.
Every hug.
Every lesson.
Every correction.
Every conversation.
Every moment where I chose patience instead of rage.
Every moment where I chose tenderness instead of domination.
Every moment where I chose to see them as children of God, not extensions of my ego.
This has not been easy.
Breaking a generational curse is not easy.
People use that phrase casually now, but there is nothing casual about it. A generational curse is not broken by a slogan. It is broken in moments when the old pattern rises in the body and you refuse to obey it. It is broken when anger arrives and you choose wisdom. It is broken when pain wants to reproduce itself and you say no. It is broken when the father becomes the wall between the past and the child.
That is love.
Love is not only what you give.
Sometimes love is what you refuse to pass down.
Through love, I was able to break a generational curse of abuse.
Through love, my children have never had to feel an ounce of the pain that was handed to me.
That may be the greatest evidence of God’s love in my life.
Not that I survived.
Not that I achieved.
Not that I became a watchdog.
But that the pain stopped with me.
Love In A World That Rewards Hatred
We live in an active world.
A loud world.
A divided world.
A world where hatred performs well.
A world where cruelty can be monetized.
A world where humiliation is entertainment.
A world where public life is often built around turning people into enemies before they have a chance to be understood.
This is why Part 2 matters.
Because if love is faith in the Creator, then love cannot remain abstract.
Love has to be practiced in the world we actually live in.
Not an imaginary world.
Not a soft-focus world.
Not a world where everyone is kind and every wound is healed and every system is just.
Love has to operate here.
In this world.
In Miami.
In Washington.
In politics.
In journalism.
In family.
In public corruption.
In fatherhood.
In loneliness.
In ridicule.
In the places where people smile with knives behind their teeth.
In the places where powerful people expect no one to read the documents.
In the places where broken fathers create wounded sons.
In the places where wounded sons decide whether they will become broken fathers too.
That is where love must show up.
And if love does not show up there, then what are we really talking about?
Love Is Not Victimhood
I have never wanted to live as a victim.
That does not mean I deny what happened.
It means I refuse to let what happened own me.
Victimhood, as a permanent identity, can become another cage. It can become a second prison built on top of the first one. It can make the wound into a throne. It can make pain into the center of the self.
I understand why people go there.
Pain wants to be recognized.
Pain wants witnesses.
Pain wants language.
Pain wants justice.
But love gave me a different path.
I can tell the truth about what happened without making trauma my god.
I can name the abuse without worshiping the wound.
I can remember the blood without becoming bloodthirsty.
I can expose evil without being consumed by evil.
That is what faith in the Creator did for me.
It gave me a place to stand that was deeper than injury.
It allowed me to say: yes, this happened. Yes, it was real. Yes, it was horrifying. But no, it will not define the totality of who I am.
I am not hatred.
I am not revenge.
I am not jealousy.
I am not bitterness.
I am not the extension cord.
I am not the tree branch.
I am not the broken skin.
I am not the broken father.
I am a child of God.
And because I have faith in the Creator, I can love.
Ancient Wisdom In A Modern Life
In Part 1, I wrote about love through ancient texts. I looked at biblical love, Egyptian Ma’at, and the Sumerian connection between love, sacred life, renewal, and flourishing.
Those were not museum pieces to me.
They were mirrors.
The Bible teaches love of God with the whole self. It teaches that God is love. It teaches that perfect love casts out fear. That is not poetry for the wall. That is a survival code.
Because fear could have ruled me.
Fear could have made me cruel.
Fear could have made me small.
Fear could have made me suspicious of all tenderness.
Fear could have made me repeat the pain.
But love cast something out.
Not all at once.
Not magically.
Not without struggle.
But steadily.
Egyptian Ma’at gives another angle. Truth. Balance. Order. Justice. The idea that life must be aligned with something higher than chaos.
That matters because abuse is chaos. Corruption is chaos. Lies are chaos. Hatred is chaos. A father turning violence against a child is chaos. A government official abusing public trust is chaos. A society that rewards deception is chaos.
Love, then, becomes part of restoring order.
Love becomes Ma’at in motion.
Not because I am Egyptian.
Not because I am trying to flatten spiritual traditions into one thing.
But because ancient people understood that truth, justice, balance, and life were connected. They understood that the moral world and the cosmic world were not strangers.
Sumerian sacred-love traditions remind us that love is tied to life, fruitfulness, renewal, and flourishing.
That also speaks to my life.
Because love made me fruitful where hatred tried to make me barren.
Love made me a father who could give tenderness.
Love made me a watchdog who could pursue justice.
Love made me a man who could carry loneliness without letting loneliness turn into poison.
Love made me keep going.
That is ancient wisdom in modern skin.
The Offramp
I continue to carry that love into this new phase of my life with the Offramp.
Sharing it with the world.
Where it goes, I do not know.
But if the past is any indication of the future, I am pretty sure it is as bright as the rising sun over South Beach.
That image means something to me.
The rising sun over South Beach is not just beautiful. It is defiant. It rises over a city that has seen everything. Wealth and poverty. Beauty and danger. Music and violence. Faith and fraud. Tourists and survivors. Neon and blood. Ocean and concrete. Memory and reinvention.
The sun still rises.
That is love too.
Love rises.
Love rises over the wound.
Love rises over the city.
Love rises over the boy with the afro and tattered clothes.
Love rises over the man reading documents alone.
Love rises over the father holding his children with tenderness he had to learn through pain.
Love rises over the public square.
Love rises over corruption.
Love rises over hatred.
Love rises over every attempt to make cruelty the final word.
That is why Offramp matters to me.
It is not just a platform.
It is not just politics.
It is not just commentary.
It is a place where the overflow goes.
It is where faith becomes words.
It is where love becomes warning.
It is where pain becomes testimony.
It is where investigation becomes service.
It is where the watcher says: I have seen enough darkness to know light matters.
What Love Looks Like Now
So what does love look like in the active world today?
It looks like telling the truth when lies are more profitable.
It looks like protecting your children from pain you were handed.
It looks like refusing revenge when revenge would be understandable.
It looks like staying soft in the right places and hard in the right places.
It looks like mercy without naivety.
It looks like strength without cruelty.
It looks like justice without hatred.
It looks like faith that does not hide from reality.
It looks like a survivor who does not become an abuser.
It looks like a watchdog who does not become a cynic.
It looks like a father who does not let his wounds parent his children.
It looks like a man who can stand alone because God was with him when he was a child.
It looks like the refusal to pass pain forward.
It looks like the courage to expose what others want hidden.
It looks like seeing the image of God even in a world full of masks.
It looks like walking through alien faces and still carrying light.
That is love.
Not the cheap version.
Not the slogan version.
Not the version that disappears when life gets hard.
The active version.
The ancient version.
The Creator-rooted version.
The version that survives extension cords, tree branches, poverty, alien faces, loneliness, ridicule, thankless work, and the long road of fatherhood.
The version that keeps pouring out.
The Final Word
I began with memories.
Some good.
Some bad.
Some horrifying.
But memory is not only a place of pain. Memory is also evidence. It is the record of what God brought me through. It is the archive of survival. It is the testimony of a boy who should have been broken but was not.
The world gave me reasons to hate.
God gave me love.
The world gave me wounds.
God gave me faith.
The world gave me alien faces.
God gave me wisdom.
The world gave me loneliness.
God gave me purpose.
The world gave me pain.
God gave me children I could love without passing that pain to them.
The world gave me corruption to investigate.
God gave me the eyes to watch the watchers.
So when I ask, “What is love?” I no longer answer from theory alone.
I answer from blood.
I answer from childhood.
I answer from Miami.
I answer from fatherhood.
I answer from documents.
I answer from lonely rooms.
I answer from faith.
Love is all-encompassing faith in the Creator that overflows into the active world.
Love is the force that kept hatred from becoming my inheritance.
Love is the force that let me survive without becoming cruel.
Love is the force that helped me break a generational curse.
Love is the force that turned pain into purpose.
Love is the force that made a poor, abused boy from Miami into a man who could watch the watchers and still love the world enough to keep warning it.
That is love.
And I am still carrying it.
I never put it down.