Soren Gray

It would be foolish to assume that this is nothing but a game, where nothing is yours.

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

It is necessary to follow in accordance with a set of values throughout your life; religious or not. But most commonly so.

Without a guiding framework, the aspirant to greatness is akin to a wanderer, lacking the moral compass necessary to direct their efforts toward greatness.

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the noise isn't entertainment, it's insulation, something between the self and the self, and they know this the way they know most things they can't stop doing, completely, and without looking directly at it

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the unexamined life doesn't stay clean, it composts, slow and warm and invisible, and what they're standing on isn't ground anymore, it's just the packed-down weight of every question they let go soft before it could cut them

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the untested grieve loudly, which is how you know, the real thing makes people quiet the way a gut wound makes people quiet, all the breath going inward, none left for the room

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

purpose is just pressure with a name on it, and driftlessness is just drowning on a calm day, and the body doesn't care which one kills it, only that it went in one direction or none, and both leave the same face at the end

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the performed grief always needs a witness, it actually requires one, the way a fire requires air, and the real thing, the weight that won't dissolve, that one mostly just needs somewhere to set down for a minute, and there's never anywhere

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the performed wound announces itself, the carried one just changes how you move, and the tell is always in the eyes, some people cry in a way that wants to be watched, and some people go very still in the way of an animal that's learned stillness is the only remaining option

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the life never tested by anything real doesn't stay empty, it fills, the way standing water fills, and what grows in it isn't peace, it's just the slow rot of every question they managed not to ask, floating there, softening, unrecognizable now even to them

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the scroll is a kind of prayer, endless, to nothing, just the hands moving so the mind can't close its mouth around what's actually there, and they do it for hours, the whole architecture of distraction built to keep one thought from finishing its sentence

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the scar doesn't hurt, the nerve damage doesn't either, and that's the whole problem, that's the thing they never think to ask, not is it hurting but is it feeling anything at all, joy included, the way a burned hand can hold fire now and call that strength

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the animal that stops running doesn't always find shelter, sometimes it just gets too tired to register the cold, and they called that stillness, they called that finally arriving somewhere, the frost already working its way in while they settled into the quiet like it was a gift

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

healed means the wound closed from the inside, left something dense where the softness was, numb means the signal just stopped reaching, and they're living in the silence like it's peace, never wondering why nothing quite reaches them anymore either, joy included

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

there's a handshake that isn't a handshake, two people in a room and something passes, wordless, fast, the recognition of someone who's seen the bottom of their own capacity and kept moving anyway, you know it by what doesn't need saying

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

rest as a word they wear over the shape of a thing they won't face, the bed is just the place the avoidance goes horizontal, and they come out of it the same weight they went in, calling that recovery, calling that care

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the numbed life isn't peaceful, it's just a body that stopped registering the pressure, the way a foot goes dead under long weight, and they called the deadness calm, built a whole life on not feeling it, and called that surviving

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

the untested have opinions about fire the way the well-fed have opinions about hunger, sure, articulate, present in the conversation, and the tell is always the comfort in their face, no ash on them, no memory their body refuses to let them finish

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

some came to softness the long way, through the thing that almost didn't let them out, and it shows, it's quiet, it doesn't announce itself, and then there's the other kind, soft the way something is soft that was never asked to hold weight

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

numb isn't an absence, it's a presence wearing an absence like a coat, and the tell is the way they stop just short of the real thing, every time, the way a man afraid of depth always finds a reason to stay near the shore and calls it preference

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

retreat called rest, avoidance called boundaries, the flinch renamed a limit, and somewhere in all that careful language a person dissolved who might have survived the thing they're fleeing, if they'd just let it catch them

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

some people arrive at their opinions the way tourists arrive at ruins, impressed, briefly, already composing what they'll say about it later, and you can tell by how clean their hands are, how full of feeling they are without any of the weight.

[Soren Gray @itssorengray]

there are people you meet and you know, not from anything said, just from the way they don't flinch when the room gets uncomfortable, the way they go still in the particular way of someone who once had nowhere to go, and you recognize it the way a scar recognizes cold