El-mom

'No! I haven't succeeded at anything,' she says. 'I have written good, and sometimes great books. But, for me, success is not a public thing. It's a private thing. It's when you have fewer and fewer regrets.'

'No! I haven't succeeded at anything,' she says. 'I have written good, and sometimes great books. But, for me, success is not a public thing. It's a private thing. It's when you have fewer and fewer regrets.'

Me and my mother are the only survivors from our family, from our neighborhood, from our lives. It’s been like this for a while. We rarely go out. Our meals are a haphazard assortment of rats and insects. They’re abundant where death is. But the rats have learned to avoid our hut, and the insects we can stomach no longer.

Before you make art, you must be a human — Yun Hyong-Keun.

Once I enter a museum, I stroll along the galleries, hands clasped behind my back as I scan the walls. When I do stop in front of a painting, I almost always turn to the information plaque next to it before the painting itself, spending more time reading the description than I do gazing at the painting. It is as if I am more intent on framing its place in history than I am on the painting inside the frame. And I look at other visitors as they look at the paintings, wearing ear buds or holding a guidebook, and photographing the works and, just as often, themselves in front of them. Are they, I wonder, more or less serious than I am?

‘When you go to the library, you don’t walk along the shelves looking at the spines of books and on your way out tweet to friends, “I read 100 books today!’’’

‘I am not saying that all passionate people are good painters,’ Beyle wrote. ‘I am instead saying that all great artists have been passionate men.’

‘La beauté n’est que la promesse du bonheur.’

I have watched governments speak the language of universal coverage at international podiums while making entirely different calculations at home about which populations qualify for the word universal.

Thing about growing up, I guess, is that you learn to hold two contradicting truths as they are. You learn that two contradicting things could be true simultaneously. For example, for me, it's the perspective about time. On one hand, I'm like "so little time, so many things to do". There is this tiny bit of pain I feel every time I have to cut things off my checklist for later because I don't have the capacity or the time to entertain them, and in the grander scheme of things, this applies too. Realizing that you can't be a master at everything, explore and do everything you want to do, there's this bittersweet pain that comes with it. On the other hand, I have this contradicting perspective that's like "We have, God willing, decades after this. And what's life worth if not taken slow and time taken well". And this helped when I realized I rushed through everything because I either had a scarcity mindset or because I genuinely felt like I didn't have enough time. I do. I have, God willing, decades after this. And even if I don't, I could say I try to live in such a way that I'm on my way to not regretting if I die. Because when you think about it, if your mindset is anything can happen and you can die anytime anyway, then why not enjoy it. And if your mindset is that of you'll live a long life, again, why not enjoy it, while making sure you're building well towards it. Following up on the last note comes a second set of contradictions I hold. On one hand, life is worth it through the small, painless, content moments you experience. It's in the Sunday mornings in your new favourite t-shirt with the "Elpadre" at the back, your mug of tea, your saved articles on Substack. It's in randomly watching an Amharic movie at a cinema on a random afternoon that's now much better because of who's with you. It's in your sibling telling you about the weird dream she had while you're brushing your teeth, and you're just standing there, listening, fully happy and at peace with the fact that you'd rather not be anywhere else. On the other, life is worth it in the pain you feel when you're on the way to earning something meaningful. It's worth it on the all-nighters you spend moving towards something that gives you a deep sense of purpose, or at least a means to actualize that purpose. It's worth it in the times you get out of the bed when you're exhausted to your bones, because you have to keep a promise you made to yourself. It's worth it, when you go for what's honest and painful than what's a lie and comfortable, because the end result is better. The way I see it, is that the journey makes the destination just as much worth it. And most things in life, the meaningful ones at least, come with a prize. But that's what makes them special, what makes them extraordinary, maybe not for other people, but for you. Both of these contradictions, I think, have taught me that two contradictions don't mean one is wrong, it means they just exist. And I wish I have that nuance more and more as I go, but for now, this will do :)

The concept above, the one that says "women are born into this world to wait for their counterparts", is something I struggled to see the relevance of. This largely comes from the way I grew up, I've never had to separate the concept of a strong, independent woman from the idea of marriage. In fact, I think, subconsciously, I learned the opposite. The idea I have is that you need to be a strong, full, independent woman to get INTO a fulfilling marriage, which runs so against the common rhetoric that it landed as not a full whiplash per se, but a small bit of shock. But think about it, I'm not saying you necessarily need to be an extremely ambitious, all-independent woman to be a healthy partner or wife, but you do need to be a full human being. By a full human being, I mean someone with her own full life, a life constructed by herself, for herself, without the male gaze as the main driver. This applies to the man in the relationship as well, but that's conventionally expected, interestingly enough. Tying this to my worldview, I don't think two halves, or one half and one whole, make a healthy, fulfilling, lasting partnership. I think both people need to be full human beings who can hold their own independently, coming together because they choose to. I'm not saying there's no room for roles or complementary strengths in raising a family, I'm saying even that only holds healthily if each person is already able to stand on their own before they walk into it. The marital puzzle, as I see it, isn't strong because the pieces need each other to survive. It's strong because each piece was already complete on its own, and chose to interlock anyway, for the better. What I'm saying is this, incompleteness at the individual level leads to unhealthy, unfulfilled individuals, which in turn leads to unhealthy partnerships. I don't buy the idea that you find your purpose, become whole, once you get into a relationship or get married. I don't think that exists anywhere outside the fairy tales. Which is to say, the alternative rhetoric, the one that tells women they come into this world to search for marriage to complete them, doesn't logically make sense to me, genuinely. I know this is built from my personal experience and may not reflect every marriage that has ever worked. So if anyone can make the opposing case well enough to convince me, I'm actually open to it, especially considering I've never once heard it argued in a way that was logically and ethically sound enough to beat. Make of this what you will.

I don't know if this is a hot take, but reels/vids like "I read so you don't have to", "Let me summarize this piece of info so you don't have to"... bug me. Well.. ok, not all of them. I'd understand where it comes from if the piece being summarized is, say, updates about the stock market, but it really really bugs me when this is about historical texts, entire books, entire subjects. On one hand, I get why they exist. Besides the "justified" dopamine rush people will get from engaging in something intellectual on platforms known to make you feel guilty, it also serves to make this knowledge "accessible" for the general public, considering people "don't have" the time to engage deeply in these topics and actually educate themselves. On the other, I feel like the issue is with how it's framed rather than the content itself. I think, if it was framed so that you could get an intro to a topic or a book and you're encouraged for you to go check that, then that, I could see the point of. As it stands though, contents like ones I mentioned above, I feel them making me feel dumb even more than empowering me or teaching me something new. So here's the thing that actually bugs me, I think, it's acting like a substitution for the actual thinking people have to go through. Sure, I could summarize an entire book and impart some form of knowledge in you - which, by the way, is my interpretation to start with which, say... if it's a piece you want to critically engage with, I'm already blocking your way. But why? Essentially, wouldn't that be a degradation of your own intelligence? Think of it this way, I feel like this is somewhat an elevated version of the practice vs theory dilemma, in the sense that you feel like you know something well (and, in theory, you do) but you don't actually know it. Sure, you now understand what you want to know in a bite-sized, palatable format, but are you really growing because of that? I think, to truly improve your thinking, to truly understand and improve your life, you need to engage, contemplate, understand the intricacies of, and debate with a material to the point that it challenges you, and I feel like that coming in a short-form palatable manner blocks you away from that. Make of this what you will.

I don't know if this is a hot take, but reels/vids like "I read so you don't have to", "Let me summarize this piece of info so you don't have to"... bug me. Well.. ok, not all of them. I'd understand where it comes from if the piece being summarized is, say, updates about the stock market, but it really really bugs me when this is about historical texts, entire books, entire subjects. On one hand, I get why they exist. Besides the "justified" dopamine rush people will get from engaging in something intellectual on platforms known to make you feel guilty, it also serves to make this knowledge "accessible" for the general public, considering people "don't have" the time to engage deeply in these topics and actually educate themselves. On the other, I feel like the issue is with how it's framed rather than the content itself. I think, if it was framed so that you could get an intro to a topic or a book and you're encouraged for you to go check that, then that, I could see the point of. As it stands though, contents like ones I mentioned above, I feel them make me feel dumb even more than empowering me or teaching me something new. So here's the thing that actually bugs me, I think, it's acting like a substitution for the actual thinking people have to go through. Sure, I could summarize an entire book and impart some form of knowledge in you - which, by the way, is my interpretation to start with which, say... if it's a piece you want to critically engage with, I'm already blocking your way. But why? Essentially, wouldn't that be a degradation of your own intelligence? Think of it this way, I feel like this is somewhat an elevated version of the practice vs theory dilemma, in the sense that you feel like you know something well (and, in theory, you do) but you don't actually know it. Sure, you now understand what you want to know in a bite-sized, palatable format, but are you really growing because of that? I think, to truly improve your thinking, to truly understand and improve your life, you need to engage, contemplate, understand the intricacies of, and debate with a material to the point that it challenges you, and I feel like that coming in a short-form palatable manner blocks you away from that. Make of this what you will.