juliana ong

The decline of deviance is mainly a good thing. Our lives have gotten longer, safer, healthier, and richer. But the rise of mass prosperity and disappearance of everyday dangers has also made trivial risks seem terrifying. So as we tame every frontier of human life, we have to find a way to keep the good kinds of weirdness alive. We need new... See more

in the past, our social lives were primarily dictated by rules, duty, obligation, and commitment. And in the other parts of the world, it still is. That is how social living is organized. You don’t go to see your grandparents because you feel like it. You go because you have to, because it’s what you do. We have replaced commitments with feeling,... See more

In both myth and theory, Eros is the same force: the spark that brings aliveness out of inertia. To live erotically is to stay attuned to that rhythm, to let the energy that animates the world also animate you. But that kind of vitality resists management, which is precisely why the modern world fears it.

surrendering is not a passive act, but the willingness to be changed; to accept and do the work, and then to leave a space where life moves through you.

Koga came to realize as he got older that success is not finite; choice is. He shares, “In your twenties, you’re afforded a lot of choice because you likely have fewer considerations: no mortgage, no health condition, no children or aging parents. As you grow older, your choices tend to narrow—not because you can’t actually do things, but that you... See more

“I think a lot about those whose lives I find fascinating, and it’s often they who tried new and varied things on the way to figuring out what they were great at: Christopher Walken was a lion tamer, Mrs. Prada is a trained mime artist. Maybe my future iteration is something in the circus. We’ll see. Perhaps after this swim.”