— Søren Kierkegaard, Journalen, JJ 167

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What happens if someone sees you?
Not merely passing in the opposite direction,
or that brief mutual glance on the street
that makes your body tingle —
but sees you.
Not your skin, nor the color of your eyes,
nor the practiced smile,
but you. Into you.

Have you ever been seen?
Made naked by a stranger?
The sudden realization that this new person knows you,
perceives a still point at the heart of you —
but knows not yet your name.
It took only one glance.

Sometimes the lightning strikes on both sides,
in the same instant.
Then the magnetic pull
cannot be overcome.
It’s beautiful.

This power runs through all of us.
You have the gift of in-sight too —
I know that it has wielded you before,
no less than twice or thrice.

I often wonder what people have seen in me.
I am not easy. I am hidden away.
Each layer of my being contains a lock without a key.
I know not where they are.
I welcome you to try.

You’d see a part of me, but never all:
a color, a shape,
an idea,
a deeply held feeling or belief —
glimmers of myself that ripple into your light,
only to vanish from your view.

I am not insecure. I am not delicate.
I am not secretive, nor shifty.
Ask, and I will answer—truthfully,
and likely far more deeply than you expected.
But the answers to your questions won’t release the locks.
Nothing wholly opens. Nothing is fully revealed.
It cannot be.

It is not possible to say all there is about oneself,
nor all we realize of each other.
We share what we can.
Sometimes we pay dearly for sharing our vulnerabilities.
But we can never share it all.

That is why we’re locked
in ways that cannot be broken
or unlocked;
why nothing is ever fully disclosed;
why we are — and remain — a mystery,
to each other and to ourselves.

And this is part — only a part — of what makes life beautiful:
we share even as we hide,
protect even as we expose,
reveal even as we conceal and cover over.
We remember and forget.
Look back as we move forward.
We learn as we unlearn.

It is why we live.
For either we are living, or we are not.
We cannot hold both life and death at once.
There is no middle ground.
We fight to stay protected from the end,
and so defend ourselves until the end —
with every breath, until we stop.
For only then are we unlocked.
And only then are we not.

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When I was very young, I fell in love for the first time. I could feel it coming, that tidal wave of emotions, instability, bliss, drunkenness, and aliveness in a way previously unknown to me. But along with it came a choice — a very conscious one — materializing in my head as the air tensed with the wave’s approach. Is this what you want? Are you ready to fall in love? You do not have to; it is entirely up to you.

I had also never experienced such a confrontation within myself before. Direct and stark. I stood still for a moment. The world paused.

And then I decided: of course I will make the leap. I will plunge into the water and attempt to ride this infinite wave that is fast approaching. Too fast to avoid now anyway. And so, I jumped, and I fell.

The ocean is immense. My splash impacted no one except for me. Not the tide or the currents or the schools of fish or sharks, plankton, anemones, coral, seaweed, or the shrimp. My ripple disappeared as quickly as it had formed. But I was underwater, and it was certainly impacting me.

I suddenly found myself experiencing the world as I never had before. It was a wholly new awareness. A new state of being. It was exhilarating. It was also scary. The waves are terrifying. You have to swim with them to avoid certain doom — but as the winds change, you find yourself suddenly against them. The water’s rush is unrelenting. Take care, lest by swimming, you are drowning.

Very quickly, I had to churn water, while staying relaxed, alert to any creature that might want a snack of me or my beloved. It’s constant and merciless. There are times when you have to separate. Then, not only does the water and its dangers persist, but the sense of powerlessness sets in. Anything could happen while you remain apart, and the thought alone can drive you mad.

Then there are the storms. Now the waves are massive. The winds are powerful, the churn of the water overwhelming. Crushing. Water can snap your spine if you catch the wave just right.

Or else the doldrums. When the sea of love has peaked, it tumbles down until it settles, silences, arrives at stillness. For the deluge storm cannot last forever. It finds release, only to stop. The sun comes out as the clouds recede.

And suddenly, while floating on the surface, the world has paused once again. No more turbulence, no more swell, no more energy. Nothing happening but that I stay afloat. I’ve been in the water for quite some time. Osmosis permits a comingling of my body with the waters of the rolling deep.

After the rush of my initial plunge and the adjustment to the seemingly infinite waves, we come to a hush, a sense of peace. I no longer feel the blood pumping through my body. I’ve regained my mind. Clarity.

But already, it flickers. The stillness will not hold.

As if on cue, my nerve endings perceive a new sensation: the scorch of the sun’s rays. Reality on the surface burns.

The stillness was a mere lull, as is every lapse into the doldrums. I can either remain at the surface or plunge back beneath in hopes of finding the rush once more.

Out of the depths, I hear my name being called. “Come to me, Sousarion. Away from the sun’s fires, which will char you and cause you to loathe the sea of love you’re swimming in. Come away from there. Come to me.”

Become seared by the fires of the sun or submerge myself once more into the depths? There can hardly be a balance. It is an unyielding, unqualified choice. Either/or. And no avoiding it. I may have taken the initial plunge, but I had not expected this. I had expected none of it.

And it all remains a mystery.

My mind has hardly had a moment to catch up to the poundings of my heart, and to the awakened storm of sensations bursting around and within me. Wave after wave. It’s been wonderful. I’ve never felt so alive. And now I’m about to burst into flame upon the glassy skin of the sea. This too is a pain I had neither expected nor prepared for. I do not want to burn. Nor do I wish to drown. And yet I must avoid the ring of fire.

With that I dive once more.

Not a fall — this time I am aware, and prepared.

I only hope I have the strength to welcome the rush anew without letting the torrent overwhelm me. I could have drowned. I could have perished. I need to find a balance beneath the waves and come up for air from time to time. It’s a fragile steadiness, yet it holds.

Before, I dove without knowing how to breathe underwater.

Naked and naïve.

This time I’m measured, careful. Still embracing. I reject the dream. Yet I still love. It will be infinite but also limited, since without a limit that allows me to persist, the pressures of the deep will crush me. They will crush us.

No — that must not happen.

I’m diving into the water again, adjusting myself to the coolness of the motion. I swim much better now. Even so, I must improve. It will be difficult. It is a life’s work. This is the work of love. So much, so difficult, and still, so worth the toils and struggles.

Something for which I have the chance to make her proud.

Not only proud, but glad. Lucky. Happy.

It’s not impossible. We are actual and we will remain possible.

Keep swimming, keep loving. Be with me my partner. In sync and in tandem, one for the other, together. Conceive it. Then bring it into being — and be.

Take the plunge with me, my love.

Let’s swim and find our way.

“To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a will to overpower, a will to subdue, a will to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), First Essay, Section 13.

I love Uncle Friedrich, I really do. He’s one of Germany’s greatest writers and, in my view, the most important philosopher of the past one-and-a-half centuries. (I will clash swords over this claim.) He communicated a deep understanding of the human soul, unseen, perhaps, since Plato. Without him, there would be no Freud, no Jung, no modern psychology at all. And that’s before we even touch on his impact on art, language, politics, metaphysics, evolution, history, and much, much more.

Now that I’ve lavished him with much glaze and deservèd praise, I have a retort. A jab back at him. A stab. Perhaps it will penetrate and draw blood.

Nietzsche’s passage is bold and unambiguous: Strength must express itself as strength. Power, by its very nature, must seek to dominate. To ask otherwise is to demand the absurd: that weakness should behave as strength.

If we expand a bit, Nietzsche is writing in the context of his larger critique of Christian morality, particularly its elevation of meekness as a virtue and its inversion of traditional power structures. He argues that Christianity has falsely rebranded weakness as strength, leading to a moral system that shackles the strong and lionizes the feeble.

But is he correct?

Did Christianity, as Nietzsche claims, masquerade weakness as strength for 2,000 years? Did the Catholic Church – arguably the most politically powerful institution in European history – exercise humility and meekness as it waged crusades, deposed kings, and maintained inquisitions? Christianity’s rhetoric may have venerated the weak, but its institutions operated on the very principles of power and domination that Nietzsche praises. In this view, those principles and deeds were far from noble – they were corrupt, even evil.

This raises a deeper question: If power and domination define strength, does that definition hold at all levels? Do the same rules apply to individuals as they do to institutions?

Nietzsche’s argument applies not just on the macro level (world religions, institutions, systems of power) but also on the micro level, at the scale of the individual man. If we accept his framework, then the logic should remain consistent: strength in the individual should also be expressed through conquest, struggle, and the bending of the world to one’s will.

But is this truly strength? Must strength only be defined by dominance? Is there no interplay between strength and what is commonly seen as its opposite?

And what if Nietzsche’s premise, this instinctive drive to overpower, actually conceals a deeper drive?

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Power, Misunderstood

The true power of a man – an ἀνήρ, an hombre – is exhibited not by his capacity to dominate, but through his ability to extend kindness.

Why? Because domination is, paradoxically, an expression of insecurity. A man who seeks to control others confesses, through his very need for control, that he fears them. He relates to them as potential threats. To overpower, to subjugate, to crush – it is the weak man, not the strong one, who feels compelled to act this way. His strength is a false armor, his aggression a mask for his frailty.

Such a man has been molded by Thomas Hobbes, who, in Leviathan, envisions a world where every man is locked in war with every other. His political theory is not one of strength but of perpetual fear. Power, in the Hobbesian framework, is nothing more than the preservation of one’s own weakness.

And Nietzsche? He builds upon this Hobbesian foundation, taking the fear of powerlessness and elevating it into a virtue, transforming it into a key component of the will to power, the relentless drive to dominate. But in doing so, he exposes the very weakness he claims to reject. This key aspect of his philosophy reveals itself not as a celebration of strength but a confession of its absence.

In the end, his own life provided the ultimate contradiction.

When Nietzsche saw a horse being beaten in the streets of Turin, he did not stand idly by, nodding in approval at the master’s exercise of strength. He did not revel in the whip’s crack as an expression of life-affirming power. He ran to the creature, weeping, throwing his arms around its neck in a desperate attempt to shield it from suffering. He defended the weak against the strong – and then collapsed into madness.

What does that tell us?

Contrast this with the man who acts with kindness.

When a man extends kindness to another, he displays something far more powerful than brute strength. He demonstrates confidence, self-mastery. He signals that he sees no enemy in the other, that he has no need to assert himself through violence or intimidation. In offering kindness, he acknowledges the humanity of the other, recognizing their potential, their dignity, their worth.

This is what true strength looks like.

It is such an incredible tragedy that humanity, for the most part, remains unable to relate to its fellow human beings in this way.

The Collapse of Western Culture and the Absence of Kindness

Mistrust, fear, selfishness, relentless domination drives… these are among the most insidious sicknesses that have brought Western culture to the brink of collapse.

And yet we still refuse to question our hyper-individualism, our self-destructive consumption for the sake of endless treats, the casual surrender of our private data to the broligarchy with hardly a huff, or our out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude toward the world beyond our doorstep. As a result, we are lonelier and meaner, less happy and more atomized, advantage-seeking yet whiny little betas, shallower and stupider, cynical yet easily manipulated. We are unfocused, unable to sustain relationships, clumsy, unsubtle – self-loathing.

And what is missing? The healing principle of kindness.

Not just kindness in words, but in action. Not just the performance of kindness, but the embodiment of it.

An act of kindness communicates something fundamental: You are seen. You are felt. You are included.

It is an invitation. A welcome, an extended open hand. Unconditioned. A hope that you will accept. And while a perfectly acceptable response might be the simple, “thank you, no,” very few will reject it outright with hostility. Why? Because kindness is universally intuitive, universally intelligible. Regardless of language, culture, or creed. Kindness is understood for what it is – not as an act of self-interest, but an act which recognizes our humanity.

And that is where its power lies.

Kindness is the force that humanizes power. Without it, strength remains rooted in fear, expressed as mere brutality. But armed with kindness, power becomes something far greater: the ability to uplift the world. To guide it toward peace, toward happiness.

That is the highest expression of strength.

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“… this friendship which together we fostered, as long as God willed, so entire and so perfect that certainly you will hardly read of the like, and among men of today you see no trace of it in practice. So many coincidences are needed to build up such a friendship that it is a lot if fortune can do it once in three centuries.”

– From de l'Amitié, Montaigne, Essays, Book I Chapter 28

Michel de Montaigne and Étienne de La Boétie – a friendship so rare, it comes but once every three centuries, or so Montaigne claimed.

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After much reflection on which thinker should inaugurate this Vox Philosophorum (voice of the thinkers, artists, writers, philosophers) space, I returned to Montaigne. I opened his Essays and turned to On Friendship.

We are all inclined toward friendship. More than that, we need it – genuine friendship. This quote is beautiful for many reasons, but most of all because it declares an ideal: a vision of perfect friendship that serves both as an aspiration and as a reminder of its rarity. Such a bond, Montaigne tells us, is an act of fortune. A gift, not a guarantee. And by stark contrast, even the more common kinds of friendship prove to be rare.

Montaigne devotes much of On Friendship to distinguishing different human relationships, building toward the picture of something singular: the friendship he himself experienced, one so profound that, in his words, “our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them.” Such a thing, he claims, appears – with luck – maybe once every three centuries.

An ideal, then. So rare that one might call it fantastic. But Montaigne insists it is not. His friendship with Étienne de La Boétie, he tells us, was precisely this, an instance of that highest form. Fortune had granted it to him. We, reading this centuries later, might lament our lack of luck, while still admiring Montaigne’s.

However, my point is not to wallow but to aspire. Even if such an ideal is more or less beyond reach, the effort to approximate it is meaningful. True friendship proves itself through action, often in ways unimaginable until the moment arrives. And when it does, the proof is in the certainty that our friend will act on our behalf.

Why?

Because the person who helps, who comes to our aid, proves themselves to be our friend. A true friend. One who cares for our well-being – physically, mentally, emotionally.

This is the kind of friendship I hope to cultivate with you, dear reader. With each of you. Ideally. To what extent that is possible is another matter, but in theory – and as far as possible in practice – I make myself open, extending my hand, and welcoming whoever happens upon these words. I say this honestly. Openly. Wholeheartedly. I want your friendship. I hope for it.

I want to connect with you. I want you to read my work and grow with it as I grow too. I want you to tell me whatever you wish to tell me – so that I may grow from what you have to say. To offer support as needed, to inspire as opportunity allows.

If that leads you elsewhere, I will wish you well. But my hand will remain open to you, as a friend.

If I can convince you to stay – to believe in my words, my writing, my music, my art – then I will try to convince you of other ideas, positions, and outlooks as well.

Today, we are lonely and atomized. While we may never meet in person, we can connect genuinely, not merely para-socially, through words and the conversations they create.

Through care, we build solidarity. Through solidarity, we strengthen one another. And finally, through care and follow-through (my definition of friendship), we build power.

In recognition and disappointment at the loneliness and atomization that define our time, I offer this quote as an act of defiance. A hand extended in friendship. A reminder that human connection is essential, and that I remain committed to it. Committed to forging bonds that transcend distance and circumstance. A gesture of hope and welcome.

This invitation is open to all.

And so, I invite you to read and reflect on my work. May it stir and provoke, amuse and unsettle, dishearten and inspire. May it awaken your conscious reflection and that of your class, for it will challenge systems and point toward exits from their prisons. I hope to forge friendships with you—held in appreciation, admiration, and gratitude.

In unity, we strengthen. In disagreement, we learn.

“This is my practice: do as you see fit.”
– Terence

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