Relationships

To love well is to take part in someone else’s unfolding, even as they take part in yours.

In the end, maybe good friends and lovers are prompt engineers of the soul (forgive me for the AI metaphor). They suggest edits, and if we are willing to be warmed, rewoven, occasionally melted, the program of us runs cleaner, closer to what we hoped when we first began to write ourselves into being.

people have been the most transformative engine for becoming I’ve ever known.

Who we choose to orbit defines, over time, the texture and colour palette of our becoming.

A few months ago, I read an essay that rearranged me: What is Love? by Qualia Computing, which frames love as a kind of neural annealing. In metallurgy, annealing is the process of heating metal until its internal structure loosens, then cooling it slowly so it hardens into a stronger, more resilient form. The lattice reorganises; the material... See more

This is why the right gaze, the right conversation, can change you down to the grain. Emotional heat loosens the architecture of the self, and in the presence of someone who sees you vividly, the molten structure reforms around their image of you. What remains afterwards is stronger, different, marked by the shape of their attention. Attention... See more