5 Beautiful, Inspiring Lessons From ‘Heartstopper’

The right people will love you for exactly who you are.

A difficult truth: Not everyone will like you or accept you or understand you. But that’s okay, because when you find your people, they will love you for exactly who you are. You won’t feel the need to change who you are or fit into their mold of who they think you should be. Charlie and his group of friends is the perfect example of this—they love him unconditionally, no matter what anyone else has to say about it.

If you live your life according to other people’s expectations, you might miss out on true happiness.

It can be hard to be different, to stand out, to not be the person everyone wants you to be. It’s easier to mold yourself to others’ expectations because there’s a lot less pushback that way. But can you ever be truly happy if you can’t actually be who you are? By living the life other people want for you, you’re choosing to give up the life you want. And while that may seem like the easiest option in the moment, you’ll realize you’re missing out on the things in life that might actually bring you total fulfillment and happiness.

Platonic love is just as important as romantic love.

Sure, everyone wants to be in love, but there are more kinds of important human connection than just romance. Friendship can be just as powerful and can make you feel just as accepted, understood, and fulfilled. Charlie’s entire friend group was full of couples (or burgeoning ones), but that didn’t stop them from valuing their platonic relationships just as much as their romantic ones, and their friends were just as supportive and loving as their partners. Love in all forms is powerful—don’t underestimate it.

For every person who makes you feel small, there is someone else who thinks the world of you.

It’s easy to focus on the critical voices and to let the hurt others have inflicted on us overpower our senses. This pain can change our opinion of ourselves or our overall worldview, making it harder to see the people who love us entirely, who see all the good inside us. But you are not the bad things that happened to you or the bad things that have been said to you. You are loved and valued and worthy of happiness. And when you find those people who hold compassion for the pain you feel and can see all the beauty hidden underneath, hold onto them tightly.

Love won’t always look exactly like we expect it to—but I hope you embrace it anyway, because it is beautiful all the same.

Love can surprise us, the way it arises. Without ever understanding why, we may find ourselves falling for the type of person we never thought we could. Sometimes we might even fall for someone we never thought was an option, like a good friend. It’s okay to be scared and confused, but I hope when you’re given the option, you always, always choose love.