being your own friend first changes the way you love. it shifts the center of gravity, the quiet axis around which everything else moves. you stop mistaking attachment for affection, or longing for proof. you stop seeing relationships as rescue missions and start seeing them as meeting points, places where two whole people come together not because they need saving but because they recognize something familiar in each other’s stillness.

design is good if and only if the form (of the solution) fits the context (of the problem)

When faced with a difficult problem, don’t try to solve it. Instead, make sure you understand it. If you understand it properly, the solution will be obvious.

Remember this as your building community, relationships, and friends, you are not a food group for the emotionally malnourished. Build your discernment by actively listening to what people are telling you, pay attention to patterns of behaviors, and most importantly trust yourself.

Don’t be someone’s favorite way to escape starvation. We all learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs at some point. That little triangle chart that starts with food, water, and safety, then climbs its way up to love, belonging, self-esteem, and eventually, self-actualization. Most people get stuck somewhere between craving love and trying not to crumble. People love to talk about love yet they don’t like talking about need and how much relief to meet their need they’re truly looking for. So instead of assuming full responsibility for their life, they’ll hope someone or something in life will carry them to the top. And that’s where you come in. Not because you were chosen. Not because the connection was undeniable. But because you were available. Because your stability made their chaos feel less obvious. Because you smelled like something they hadn’t earned yet.

You are a person. A breathing, hurting, longing person. And you deserve to be loved not when you’re easy, but especially when you’re not. You deserve to be held when you’re messy. You deserve to be chosen even when you can’t offer anything back.

Ethics is about seeing yourself more whole so you do not betray what you love through confusion or cowardice.

Being a slave to your desires and instincts is not freedom. True freedom comes from taming your animalistic urges and transcending the primal, amoralistic condition imposed to you by your imperfect human nature. We’re all inherently flawed and prone to degenerating to a lesser, nihilistic, dehumanized state of being. Self-imposed discipline from adhering to higher spiritual teachings (or even to a secular, yet ethically firm philosophy of life) is a never-ending struggle for self improvement and human completion.

You’re better than that, King.