Let Love Have the Last Word

What does it really mean to let love have the last word? Is it a poetic phrase—or could it become a daily practice that transforms how you see yourself, relate to others, and engage with the world? In Let Love Have the Last Word, Grammy- and Oscar-winning artist Common (Rashid Lynn) argues that love is more than a feeling or ideal—it’s an action, a discipline, and the fundamental language through which we experience humanity. He invites you to explore how love acts as a unifying force between our personal wounds and collective healing.

Common contends that love’s power comes from vulnerability when we open ourselves to being seen fully—flawed, uncertain, and in process—we access a higher, spiritual connection with ourselves, others, and God. The book blends memoir, philosophy, spiritual reflection, and social commentary as he traces his journey through self-love, fatherhood, forgiveness, art, and activism. Across stories about his daughter Omoye, his absent father, his therapy sessions, and his creative evolution, he demonstrates that practicing love means confronting fear, pain, and imperfection head-on.

Love as Daily Practice

To "let love have the last word" is not an abstract ideal—it’s an intentional practice. It demands that you check in with yourself regularly, identify your patterns, and act from compassion even when it's uncomfortable. Common uses the metaphor of music and art to describe love’s rhythm: you must stay open to divine creativity, vulnerable enough to let it flow through you, and courageous enough to keep refining it even amid failure. Love, he says, is similar to crafting art—it requires repetition, vulnerability, and faith that the process itself is sacred.

This discipline of love extends to how we treat others and ourselves. Citing bell hooks’ All About Love, he emphasizes that love includes honesty, trust, and communication, not just emotion. Every time we choose awareness over avoidance—whether in a tough talk with a loved one or confronting our inner doubts—we are practicing love. You learn that love is a verb, not a noun. It is what you do in the present moment, not what you simply feel.

The Personal and the Political Dimensions

Common situates this spiritual exploration within the realities of race, fatherhood, and social justice. Whether describing his visit to prisons, his activism against mass incarceration, or his role in the film Selma, he shows that loving the world means recognizing people’s shared humanity—even those society deems irredeemable. He recalls sitting in circles with inmates at San Quentin and hearing men express remorse for their crimes, realizing that love as action means “showing up”—being present to listen, humanize, and respond. It's a powerful form of love that bridges personal redemption and collective empathy.

Likewise, vulnerability and personal healing become channels for social transformation. When Common reveals his own experiences of childhood molestation—an act of raw openness—he reframes it as a journey toward forgiveness and breaking cycles of silence. His courage becomes a message: healing personal wounds is the foundation for healing communities. This mirrors the teachings of spiritual thinkers like Marianne Williamson and Kahlil Gibran, whom Common often quotes: true love is revolutionary because it reconnects us to the divine and dismantles barriers between self and other.

Why It Matters Today

In a world fractured by cynicism, racism, and ego-driven success, Common’s message matters because it asks you to reimagine love beyond sentimentality or romance. Letting love lead means reclaiming presence—showing up consciously for your relationships, your art, and your community. It is about embracing imperfection and making peace with contradiction. You begin by loving yourself enough to look inward honestly, and then extend that love outward in tangible acts that shape your surroundings.

Through anecdotes from his therapy journey with Susan, his conversations with Michelle Obama about relationships, and reflections on parenting Omoye, Common illustrates love’s realism: it’s not easy, it’s not guaranteed, and it always requires effort. But it's also the only path toward spiritual liberation and collective renewal. The book, therefore, becomes a call to action—a roadmap for anyone seeking to live purposefully and compassionately. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Hate is too great a burden to bear,” and Common echoes that spirit to remind us that love, no matter how painful or complex, must always have the last word.

Common’s philosophy begins in the heart of vulnerability—the willingness to be seen fully, without armor. Through therapy and introspection, he learns that avoidance of intimacy stems from childhood wounds. Raised by a single mother in Chicago, he struggled with both responsibility and freedom, leading to what his therapist Susan calls “intimacy avoidance.” He often fled emotional closeness in romantic relationships, fearing being overly needed or losing autonomy. Vulnerability, then, becomes his most crucial practice—to lean into openness even when fear whispers to run.

Learning to Sit in the Uncomfortable

His sessions with Susan reveal that this avoidance is tied to a fear of abandonment and love addiction. He equates the thrill of early romance—the butterflies—with the high of being needed. Once reality sets in and intimacy demands emotional responsibility, his instinct is to pull away. Healing requires recognizing the addictive pattern and learning that love is steady presence, not emotional chase. As he says, “Love can’t be a drug; it must be a discipline.”

Through therapy, he starts declaring, “I am enough. God’s love is enough for me.” This declaration converts self-love from affirmation into spiritual truth—anchoring him in divine worth instead of external validation. Vulnerability, then, is not weakness but an act of faith.

Examples of Real-Life Application

Common’s evolving relationship with his daughter Omoye showcases vulnerability’s power. When she calls him at 2 a.m. to express how his absences hurt her, his initial defensiveness softens into attentive listening. By acknowledging rather than deflecting, he begins healing their bond. “Acknowledgement opens a door,” he reflects, echoing Coltrane’s spiritual cycle of A Love Supreme: acknowledgment, resolution, pursuit, and prayer. The process mirrors artistic creation—confessing imperfection, committing to growth, and releasing outcomes.

Additionally, his visits to correctional facilities underline how vulnerability transcends private pain. When he sits in circles with incarcerated men confessing their crimes, he realizes that acknowledging humanity in others—without judgment—is an act of collective vulnerability. Being open to hearing others’ suffering expands compassion beyond individual healing.

(Note: This echoes Brené Brown’s concept from Daring Greatly—that vulnerability is the root of courage and connection. Common transforms that insight into lived spirituality.)

Love as Staying Present

Vulnerability requires presence. Common shares his Academy Awards performance of “Glory” as a moment of divine oneness achieved through pure presence—and contrasts that spiritual high to everyday struggles of staying emotionally available. “You can’t love if you’re not present,” he writes. Presence frees us from guilt over the past and fear of the future; it grounds love in the now.

Ultimately, vulnerability reveals that choosing love is choosing truth over comfort. It means being seen, heard, and held—even when you don’t have the answers. Through this discipline, Common transforms personal wounds into creativity, compassion, and purpose. Vulnerability, he shows, is not just emotional openness; it’s the most radical form of strength.

At the center of Common’s message is that you cannot love others—including God—if you do not first love yourself. Self-love, for him, is not narcissism or retreat from community; it’s the foundation of all relationships. He writes, “It started with me. I had to love myself to understand God’s love.” Within that understanding comes the courage to forgive past pain and relinquish perfection.

The Mirror of the Spirit

He compares self-love to muscle memory—an embodied recall of love’s truth that must be practiced daily. The spiritual battle, he says, lies between the material and the divine. God’s everlasting love becomes fully visible only when we remove self-hate and shame. As he asks, “Does God love you when you don’t love yourself?” His answer: yes, but you cannot receive it until you see yourself as worthy of divine grace.

Self-love yields transformation. Like Coltrane’s journey from addiction to spiritual awakening, Common sees creative freedom as a manifestation of loving oneself enough to trust divine inspiration. When he makes music “just for creation itself,” he enters a state where ego dissolves and art becomes worship.

Breaking Cycles Through Forgiveness

His act of revealing childhood molestation marks a turning point—from suppression to self-compassion. He forgives his abuser, saying, “This is love in action.” Forgiveness breaks generational trauma by refusing to transmit pain forward. Through love, the past transforms from prison to teacher. (This parallels the healing philosophy in Desmond Tutu’s The Book of Forgiving.)

When Common says he’s learning to be “okay with my flaws,” he frames self-love as acceptance, not denial. He challenges readers to see their own broken pieces as material for creation, not evidence of failure. From that foundation, love becomes sustainable—because it begins within.

Common frequently connects love to spirituality, arguing that love is the conduit between the physical and divine. Drawing from the words of John Coltrane, Kahlil Gibran, and Scripture, he shows how art, faith, and humanity intertwine in sacred rhythm. His formula: to live in love is to live in God’s awareness.

Turning Doubt into Faith

Common stresses that you must hand over your doubts to God. Doubt freezes action, but love transforms it into pursuit and prayer. He relates his own spiritual awakening through music, recalling how Coltrane prayed for the ability to make others happy through his art after overcoming addiction. Similarly, Common’s creative flow—freestyling verses while driving down the Pacific Coast Highway—is his way of channeling divine love into sound.

Spirituality Beyond Religion

Raised Christian but inspired by Islamic teachings from his father, he believes true spirituality transcends labels. It’s about embodying divine presence, not just professing creed. He sees Jesus as the ultimate model of loving humanity through flawed circumstances, forgiving not “seven times but seventy-seven.” Such forgiveness reflects God’s omnipotent, nonjudgmental love—a goal for which Common continually strives.

Love in Action as Faith

Faith, for Common, is active presence—not wishful thinking. “Give it to God” means accepting life’s fragility while acting in compassion. When he waits through his mother’s eight-hour surgery, his calm perseverance becomes a living prayer. Through such surrender, he realizes that divine love restores dignity amid chaos. The spiritual awakening, ultimately, is recognizing love as both practice and miracle—where every act of presence becomes worship.

Art is the expression of love in motion. Common draws parallels between creativity and love’s discipline, showing that both demand vulnerability, persistence, and faith. He views artistic practice not as egoic performance but as channeling divine energy—what dancer Martha Graham called “keeping the channel open.”

Creation as Divine Energy

When Common describes making music during drives along the Pacific Coast, he portrays creation as a meditative surrender. He contrasts this to moments of doubt and judgment that block artistic flow. Removing ego allows art—and love—to pass through unhindered. “It’s as if the music is given to you,” he reflects, demonstrating how divine creativity functions like grace.

The Lesson from Coltrane

John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme functions as the spiritual template for creative love. Coltrane’s four-part cycle—acknowledgment, resolution, pursuance, and psalm—mirrors human transformation through love. Common interprets these as daily stages of self-work: acknowledge doubt, resolve to grow, pursue consistently, give thanks. Creativity becomes prayer in action.

Ultimately, Common contends that creation itself is love because it expands our shared humanity. Art born from ego diminishes spirit; art born from love uplifts. Every time we make or share something authentic, we remind ourselves and others that love is inexhaustible.

Fatherhood acts as one of Common’s deepest mirrors for understanding love’s complexity. His relationship with his daughter Omoye exposes generational patterns of absence, fear, and reconnection. Through her, he confronts the same pain he inherited from his father—an absent figure turned spiritual guide late in life.

Seeing Through His Daughter’s Eyes

When Omoye tells him he didn’t fight hard enough to be present, Common first defends himself, then learns to listen. That shift from defensiveness to empathy marks transformation. True love, he realizes, involves listening without fixing—a recurring lesson in his conversations with therapist Susan.

Honoring the Father’s Legacy

Reconnecting with his dying father brings deeper understanding. Despite physical distance, his father taught him that love transcends geography when it’s honest and creative. Their final visits in Denver become metaphors for forgiveness: love survives imperfection. Watching his father share wisdom, music, and faith until the end pushes Common to become the father he needed as a child.

(This generational insight parallels Barack Obama’s reflections in Dreams from My Father, where healing paternal wounds becomes a path to social consciousness.)

Rewriting the Map of Love

Through Omoye’s final words—“You’re the dad I’m supposed to have”—Common experiences redemption. Fatherhood teaches him that love’s perfection is not absence of failure, but presence amid imperfection. The cycle of healing begins with acknowledgment and ends in renewal, proving that love can rewrite inherited pain into purpose.

For Common, loving beyond the self means turning empathy into tangible social action. His activism—visiting prisons, filming Selma, creating organizations like Imagine Justice—embodies love as a bridge between individual compassion and collective change. “To show love, you must show up,” he insists.

Humanizing the Forgotten

His prison visits uncover moments of grace amid despair. When inmates introduce themselves by naming their victims—“I’m Mike, and I killed John Wilson”—he witnesses their effort to rehumanize those they harmed. Such acknowledgment, he says, mirrors love’s key step: seeing humanity in others. These moments illuminate redemption’s possibility even inside the darkest places.

Love Giants and Everyday Compassion

Common idolizes “love giants” like Oprah and Dr. King, not for fame but for how they make compassion practical. He argues leaders must operate from love, not control, to truly serve people. Love listens, includes, and considers—all political and personal acts. Even small gestures, like holding a door or forgiving an insult, participate in love’s social practice.

Ultimately, Common challenges readers to examine how they contribute to or reduce love in their communities. The world’s pain, he contends, activates its healing. Every act of empathy adds to that inventory of hope that ensures love—not hate—has the final word.