Ian's Blog

There is a quiet heaviness that men carry. It is rarely spoken of, rarely acknowledged, and almost never given room to breathe. In public, men are expected to look solid, unshaken, pillars of strength who do not falter. In private, they often lie awake at night, staring into the ceiling, wondering how much longer they can hold everything together. Society has crafted a script for manhood — a script that promises respect, success, and belonging if followed, but one that demands silence, suppression, and relentless performance in return. A man must provide, protect, endure, and conquer. He must never break, never cry, never confess weakness. If he fails to live up to these demands, the world is quick to label him: inadequate, unworthy, unmanly. And so men walk with a burden — not always visible, but heavy all the same. A burden of expectations they cannot fully meet, yet cannot escape. From the earliest years, boys are taught that vulnerability is dangerous. “Don’t cry.” “Man up.” “Be...

There are things every family carries but never names. Things that sit in the silence between words, in the stiffness of a father’s posture, in the sudden tears of a mother at a song from long ago, in the way a child grows up too cautious, too anxious, too ready to please. These unspoken legacies of pain, loss, shame, and survival are often more powerful than the stories we consciously pass down. They are the silent inheritance of trauma. We usually think of inheritance in terms of property, wealth, or culture. But alongside recipes, surnames, and heirlooms, families also hand down wounds. They transmit them not always through intention, but through silence, avoidance, and coping mechanisms. The scars of wars, of colonization, of poverty, of domestic abuse, of betrayals and breakdowns — these do not vanish with the generation that endured them. They live on, imprinted in behaviors, in anxieties, even in the nervous system itself. Psychologists now call this phenomenon intergeneratio...

We live in a world that often reduces intimacy to the body. To passion. To the spark that burns in a touch, in a glance, in the closeness of skin on skin. And yet, when the lights are off and the world grows quiet, we come to realize that intimacy is not measured in moments of heat, but in moments of safety. What we truly long for is not simply passion—it is rest. It is the deep exhale of knowing that the one beside us will not turn away when our beauty fades, when our strength falters, when our spirit trembles. Intimacy is not the thrill of the body alone. It is the anchoring of the soul. Because you cannot be close to someone who makes you afraid. You cannot give your heart to the one who may break it in anger, betrayal, or indifference. You cannot open yourself when you feel the sting of judgment or the shadow of rejection. Passion may ignite a fire, but only emotional security allows that fire to become a hearth—something steady, something enduring, something that warms not only ...

There is a quiet wisdom that flows through the heart of Japanese philosophy. It is not shouted, not written in capital letters, not forced upon the world with the loudness of certainty. Instead, it whispers. It leans into silence. It invites us to sit with the imperfection of life, to soften into its fragility, to marvel at its incompleteness. That wisdom is called Wabi-Sabi . Wabi-Sabi is not a single definition, but a way of seeing. It is the art of finding beauty in the cracked and weathered, the unfinished and incomplete. It is the embrace of transience, the acceptance that everything—ourselves included—is fleeting, imperfect, and always in the process of becoming. It is summed up in three truths so simple, and yet so difficult for the modern mind to accept: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect. These are not words of despair, but words of freedom. In them lies a path out of the tyranny of perfectionism, out of the anxiety of permanence, out of the pressure ...

There is a recurring theater that nations perform when citizens are murdered by the state. It begins with outrage: bodies in the streets, cries for justice, mass anger that cannot be contained. Then comes the ritual: the hurried announcement of panels, commissions, taskforces, and inquiries. These bodies are presented as mechanisms of justice, as the state’s proof that it is listening. But in truth, they are designed to do something far more sinister. They are not built to punish. They are built to pacify. They are not instruments of justice, but laundromats of human blood. Their purpose is to wash the stains of power, to translate human grief into numbers, to manage public anger while protecting the perpetrators. They function as valves—releasing pressure so the system does not explode, but never changing the pipes that carry oppression forward. Across continents and centuries, the pattern is unmistakable: compensate the victim, shield the perpetrator. Price the life lost, but protec...

Unemployment is often spoken about in terms of numbers. Politicians and economists debate percentages, job creation figures, and growth projections. Reports highlight labor force participation and unemployment rates as though human lives can be reduced to neat data points. But behind the statistics lies an unspoken truth: unemployment is not just about lacking a paycheck — it’s about slowly unraveling as a person. The worst thing about prolonged unemployment is not simply the financial hardship. It is the slow erosion of dignity, identity, and hope. It’s the way society treats you, the way your own fire dims, and the way you begin to accept a lower version of life as “normal.” It’s the way you’re subtly, sometimes not so subtly, reduced to someone who exists only to serve, not to thrive. This article explores four of the most painful aspects of prolonged unemployment: Being advised as though you are stupid. Losing your spark. Watching the lows become the new normal. Being...

The Fragility of Human Contact One of the deepest paradoxes of human existence is how easily we can wound one another, even without intending to. A single word, a gesture, a tone carried in frustration or carelessness can land like a stone on someone else’s heart. What for us may feel like a fleeting moment often leaves in another person a mark that is slow to fade. Human connection is fragile, not because we are weak, but because we are open—our lives are lived in relation, and to be in relation is to risk being touched, shaped, and sometimes hurt by others. It is within this reality that one of the most humbling truths emerges: if someone tells you that you hurt them, you do not get to decide that you didn’t. You do not get to write the story of their wound from the comfort of your perspective. You cannot measure their pain against your intention and declare them wrong. Love, humility, and humanity demand something harder: the capacity to listen, to accept, and to change. This is no...