Ian's Blog

Fatherhood is one of the most profound roles a man can step into. It is a journey marked not only by responsibility but by the potential to shape another human life. Yet for many men today, stepping into fatherhood feels like stumbling into uncharted territory without a compass. They are expected to build homes they themselves never lived in, to model love they never saw expressed, and to lead children through storms they were never guided through. They are fathers without blueprints. The absence of present, nurturing fathers across generations has created a void that many men carry silently into adulthood. This is not merely about absenteeism in the physical sense, but about fathers who were emotionally unavailable, harsh, dismissive, or preoccupied with survival in systems that ground them down. In such circumstances, boys grew into men without seeing what tenderness from a father looks like, without learning what patient correction sounds like, and without witnessing a man balance ...

There is a quiet truth that rarely finds its way into the motivational speeches and success seminars of our time: a satisfied life will always outweigh a successful one. Success is judged through the eyes of others, but satisfaction is measured in the silence of your own soul. Success is applause from outside; satisfaction is harmony from within. One fades when the crowd goes silent, the other remains with you long after the lights go out. You don’t need the world to approve of you — you need only to rest at night, content with the life you are living. The Mirage of Success From the time we are children, the world teaches us to equate life’s worth with achievement. We are told to strive, to compete, to collect trophies, titles, and possessions. The successful life, as defined by society, is one adorned with external markers: the house in a prestigious neighborhood, the car with the polished badge, the job title that commands respect, the bank balance that elicits envy. But here is t...

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...