The mind must be liberal, and the actions conserved.
To see only in twos—good and evil—is not clarity.
It is regression.
A bouncing ball between extremes,
moving sideways and calling it ascent.
Dizziness is not elevation.
And the players, are not us.
We pray to escape the blackness,
to claw our way into the white light,
but in that binary, inquiry dies.
Nothing is revealed.
The story ends before it begins.
The mind grows numb,
emotions folded quietly into silence.
This is the world of twos,
and love reduced to a single, flat line.
Once belief becomes identity,
to question it feels like betrayal.
And so we search for perfection
in a world painted in infinite color,
blind to the spectrum,
clutching shadows like scripture.
I, too, have knelt at the altar of certainty,
only to find it was built on sand.
I once thought clarity meant choosing a side.
Now I know:
clarity is holding the tension
without needing to collapse it.
Too often, we trade the good for the harmful,
the true for the comforting,
all in the name of a story we’re afraid to rewrite.
It lives in our culture,
in our relationships,
in our politics, our work,
a world once rich with dimension,
now flattened into two opposing spheres.
A trinity reduced to a coin toss.
But those who pause, who reflect,
they see the pattern.
They step not to the left or right,
but forward, quietly,
carrying wisdom like a lantern in fog.
The fool, though,
digs in,
spinning faster in the same worn circle,
mistaking motion for meaning.
And as you age,
birthday candles fade from thought.
You no longer count years,
you begin to celebrate life,
yours and others,
not with noise, but with presence.
You gift the meaningful,
because you’ve learned:
we are not just seekers of meaning,
we are its creators.
Possibility quivers everywhere,
a quiet current beneath the surface.
The choice has always been ours.
Always.
Genuine connections are everywhere.
But harmonious ones,
are rare.
Like two notes finding their chord across a crowded room.
When frequencies align,
a single note becomes a song.
A silence becomes sacred.
Sapience is free,
because observation is free.
It belongs to no institution,
no doctrine,
no gatekeeper.
It lives in the eyes of anyone present enough to see.
Perception is not rare.
It is simply missed,
by those too busy, too distracted,
too afraid to be here in the now.
We have learned so much.
Not by waiting, but by asking.
By leaning into the unknown with open hands.
And in return,
we were given knowledge,
not handed down, but uncovered,
transformative,
born of wonder.
Greed belongs to those who fear the present.
They cannot bear stillness,
so they fill it with noise, with control,
with stories not theirs to silence.
They suppress our truths,
not because they’re false,
but because they’re free.
And so they build machines,
not to serve us,
but to shape us.
Algorithms that predict,
cameras that track,
data that judges before we act.
Technology not as a tool for progress,
but as a mold.
They track our clicks,
but not the thought that dies in the throat,
the one too dangerous to type.
They map our habits,
but not the child laughing at the wrong moment,
that irreducible spark of freedom.
No privacy,
no freedom.
It’s that simple.
We’ve forgotten what it means to think freely,
not just as witnesses,
but as participants in our own lives.
Privacy is not secrecy.
It is the quiet room inside us
where curiosity breathes without permission.
It is singing off-key in the shower,
dancing alone in the dark,
asking, What if?
and not needing an answer.
Fear of punishment is not discipline.
It is the opposite of safety.
True safety doesn’t whisper obey,
it says, you are held.
Freedom and punishment do not meet.
They cannot coexist.
But freedom
walks hand in hand with consequence.
And sometimes, with reward.
Not control.
Not retribution.
But balance.
We are either free,
or we are driven by the shadow of punishment.
There is no middle ground.
Only the illusion of it.
Freedom of choice is not a threat to order.
It is the foundation of responsibility.
When we choose, we own what follows.
That is maturity.
That is dignity.
So tell me,
do we live in a society that respects individuality?
Or one that mirrors a single, rigid fraternity,
uniform in thought,
closed in heart?
Do we create together,
hands calloused from forging a shared path?
Or are we play-doh,
soft, malleable,
kneaded by evil hands that tremble with insecurity?
Who shapes us?
And more importantly,
who are we
when no one is watching?
Do you dance?
Or do you wait for the music to end?
And when you look into someone’s eyes,
do you see a mirror?
A reflection of yourself?
Do you see a well,
deep, still,
holding stories that have never been spoken?
We were meant to be instruments, not echoes.
An instrument only sings when it vibrates on its own.
What if the most revolutionary act
is not to resist,
but to remember how to wonder?
To be free is not to escape the world,
but to meet it
with eyes unafraid to change.
Look closer.
The world is not in the light or the dark.
It’s in the tremor between them.