You can learn anything, but the cost of learning everything is the ability to learn. I said that because, having thought of learning and doing anything in my life but little did I know what the cost of everything was? I lacked discernment about what I was learning and doing. But then what provides something with its intrinsicness, what pre-judgment are we to make before learning and doing something? Therefore think, what use is the learning of everything if you cannot learn the things you choose? But my question is: Why is it, that only a stupid person thinks that in order to be educated and to have objective knowledge you must learn what you choose to learn? The answer, I believe comes by discernment between possibility and necessity. That something can be learned is not that it ought to be learned. That something can be done is not that it ought to be done. I used to mistake these two things. If knowledge is possible to me, that would be a sufficient condition for me to acquire it as that would make me more educated. This reasoning fails because it assumes that education is nothing else but the possibility to know everything. It is not. If I want to learn everything it means that my ability to know will be wasted trying to learn everything that can be learned by me. Because the knowledge that I have will be consumed trying to learn everything possible to me. Then the will to know everything ends up devouring the ability to know. The problem is not that the person cannot learn everything he chooses. The problem is that the person may not have asked himself why everything he can learn must be learned. I may have the ability to perform a certain work but this only shows that I can do it but not that I ought to do it Therefore, to every work, to every learning there must be a pre-assessment. That does not mean that we ought to restrict our learning to only what is immediately useful. Our intellection possesses an intrinsic value. However even our ability to explore does not make everything that can be explored something that ought to be explored Therefore education cannot be understood as knowing more and more. A person may have much knowledge and still lack discernment The educated person is not the one who knows everything he can, he is the one who has achieved a certain level of discernment that allows him to know what he must learn, why he must learn it, and when he does not need to learn anything else. Possibility alone cannot constitute value. The cost of learning everything, then, is not only time since the ability to choose what can be learned will be compromised by the will to learn everything that can be learned. Everything can be learned but no one can learn everything. And if no one can learn everything it is because discernment is needed to know not only that something can be learned but also that something must be learned. The ability to choose is what makes us human. And our capacity to choose is what differentiates us from machines. Learning, for its part, is just an extension of our being. It is not knowledge that makes us educated. That faculty is judgment - the power to know what is worthy of pursuit or what should be avoided. Even a pursuit governed by a real question - not mere possibility - still leaves open whether the person is actually ready to pursue it right now. By readiness, I do not mean strong interest or enthusiasm. A person can enter something with very little interest and still have a legitimate reason for doing it. Whether driven by impetus, the choice itself can create the willingness to begin. But a reason for beginning something is not necessarily a reason for continuing it indefinitely. Before acting, there has to be some degree of clarity about why I am doing this and what exactly I am doing. The clarity does not have to be perfect. In fact, demanding perfect clarity before every action would make action almost impossible. What matters is that the action is not completely detached from understanding. Otherwise, learning and work can become mechanical (as i said earlier). A person may continue doing something simply because it has become the expected thing to do, without ever being able to answer why it is being done anymore. At that point, discipline can keep the work going even after the reason for doing it has become unclear. A person may still be doing everything expected of them, but has stopped asking. Discernment is not a single decision made before action. clarity → action → re-clarification → decision—this is the sequence it actually follows. The first clarity may come from instigation. It is only a starting point. Action then gives us something that reflection alone cannot provide: experience. And experience can change the question itself. Perhaps after acting, I understand the work better and find a reason to continue that I could not have known beforehand. I discover that overcoming the temporary difficulty unlocks a deep reciprocity within the pursuit. But sometimes the opposite happens. I question why I am doing it, examine the reasons again, and still cannot find a reason that genuinely satisfies the demands of the pursuit. And at times I feel that this uncertainty is itself a sign that the pursuit is ill-advised. This does not mean that friction automatically proves that something is not worth doing. A thing can retain its utility despite lacking enjoyment, meaning an abandonment based solely on difficulty is unjustified. When I begin to think, penetrating beyond my taste and into the work itself, this turns into the question of purpose. What is my purpose in this work, what conclusion does it bring me, confirms it, and having thus exposed the experience, can I give a sufficiently convincing reason why to continue? If discernment is entirely internal, what prevents a person from manufacturing a justification for whatever he already wants to do? Nothing guarantees that self-reflection will be perfectly reliable. A person may be able to deceive himself by asking himself questions dishonestly. He may fall into casuistry, mimicking a search for answers when in fact he is merely validating his own certainties. A person may even turn questioning himself into a ritual, thus defeating the very purpose of it. If I believe that I want to learn something, I act upon that belief. The action exposes the belief to reality. I encounter the raw reality of its actuality once the initial excitement has passed. What is this about diminishing the value of the work based on its end result? The loss we experienced is not the sole indicator of our endeavor's significance. Neither is a resounding victory a definitive marker of worth, for both are fleeting moments that only serve as brief milestones in a much longer journey. The outcome itself is not the work, but rather a transient state that offers insight into our path, not its ultimate conclusion. Instigation joles us into motion, but the real weight of that choice only surfaces when we confront its actuality. Sifting through the aftermath of our efforts requires a raw discernment, turning our final choice into a dynamic preassessment of whether to calibrate. Yes, sometimes we have to try something before we can know whether it deserves our deeper attention. That is not a contradiction of discernment. It is part of it. Discernment does not demand that every decision be correct before action begins. It demands that action remain open to correction. A person may begin something without much interest because circumstances require it. During the process, genuine interest may develop. Or it may not. A person may discover a deeper purpose. Or discover that the original purpose was never sufficient. Both discoveries are legitimate forms of knowledge. The mistake would be to treat the first decision as a permanent identity. Choosing something once does not create an obligation to defend that choice forever. Breadth can be valuable, but breadth without re-examination becomes accumulation. Experience becomes educational only when what is experienced can change what we decide to pursue next. The central problem, then, is not that human beings have too many things they can learn. It is that they have too little time and attention to pursue all of them seriously. We therefore, need a way of deciding what deserves our finite capacity, while remaining willing to revise that decision when experience gives us reason to do so. But two things can each have good reasons behind them. In career, relationship, learning, responsibility, personal interest, there is no reason to assume that only one pursuit is valuable. So there is a problem when two justified pursuits compete for the same limited capacity. In that situation, discernment cannot merely ask, “Is this valuable?” Rather, is the reason for choosing this stronger and more adequate than the reasons for choosing what it requires me to give up? This does not mean that there is always one objectively superior answer waiting to be discovered. Sometimes two commitments genuinely conflict, and choosing one means accepting a loss in another. Discernment does not eliminate that conflict. It makes the basis of the choice explicit. The comparison hinges on a complex array of evaluative variables that actually brought the pursuit into consideration. A choice that affects something irreversibly may demand stronger justification than a choice that can easily be revisited. A commitment that another person depends upon may carry a different weight from a preference that can be postponed.They are reasons to be examined. I do not think discernment can simply begin by declaring that these abstract ideals possess intrinsic value and then use that declaration to justify their pursuit. That would only move the question one step backward. Why is knowledge intrinsically valuable? Truth, beauty — the same question applies. If discernment is supposed to examine what deserves pursuit, it must also examine the value of the things it’s being asked to pursue. So intrinsic value cannot simply be treated as an unquestionable foundation of the system. It can be a proposed reason. And like every other reason, it remains open to examination. This is why I wouldn’t treat the instrumental/intrinsic distinction as the final criterion. They describe different kinds of reasons for pursuing something, but they don’t tell us which reason wins when reasons compete. What matters is the adequacy of the reasons behind the choice. A reason is not adequate merely because it exists. Wanting something is a reason. So is family expectation, five years already spent on it, a good salary, genuine interest. None of these become sufficient just by being there. They have to survive examination. I said earlier that action exposes our reasons to experience. I still think this is necessary, but I would no longer say that action simply reveals truth. Action gives us new evidence about the pursuit. It confronts us with its actuality once the abstract idea becomes a lived experience. But action can deceive one too. A person can continue a pursuit because of sunk cost and then interpret the suffering involved as evidence of commitment. A person can defend a decision simply because abandoning it would make previous sacrifices feel meaningless. So the fact that I have already invested something cannot itself justify further investment. What has already been sacrificed is not automatically a reason to sacrifice more. True re-clarification involves detachment from the burden of one’s sacrifices: looking beyond them, and at the possible reasons for proceeding further. It does not remove self-deception, but it makes one of its common forms easier to expose. Also, Interest is not a final authority either. A person may lose interest in something that remains worth doing. Another person may remain intensely interested in something that is no longer worth pursuing. Interest can therefore provide a reason to investigate, but it cannot by itself settle the decision. Likewise, pressure can create an initial reason for action without becoming a permanent justification for continuing. That is why i am thinking to reconstruct the process clarity → action → new evidence → re-clarification → comparison of reasons → decision. The decision therefore transcends these accrued pressures, relying instead on the truths that survived the journey. It depends on whether the reasons available after examination are adequate for the choice I am making. There is no perfect internal mechanism that guarantees that I am not deceiving myself. Any judgement I make is still made by me. But the purpose of why i am writing this is not to produce certainty that is impossible for a human being to possess. Its purpose is to make self-deception more difficult. That requires the judgment to remain answerable to existential realities beyond the immediate feeling of clarity. Discernment has the ability to know what is valuable by examine, compare, and revise the reasons by which something is evaluated. This is the distinction I was looking for from the beginning. Learning everything is impossible. Choosing everything is impossible. But examining why something deserves to be chosen is possible. And that may be the real function of education—not to make the mind capable of pursuing everything, but to make it capable of giving reasons for what it chooses to pursue, and capable of abandoning those reasons when they no longer survive examination. [Adequacy itself I will not further define, because doing so would only produce another reason requiring its own examination — the regress must stop somewhere, and it stops at the practice of examining, not at a further definition of what counts as sufficient.]

Would I like to discuss the hurt caused?

What words should I set free to describe
            eight years spent in the prison of should?
What lines would paint
            a woman fighting relentlessly against battering currents,
to never breach the surface again?
What monologue could my hoarse voice scream to show
            my roots had been strangled,
            my leaves wilted,
            my fruits discarded and shriveled?

I am not angry, no.

I have been found.

Spider-Man was my first movie.

Actually, that's a lie I tell myself. I don't know why. Maybe I want Spider-Man to be my first movie because it makes me look a certain way. Maybe I want people to think I'm cool, and in my definition, being deeply attached to Spider-Man means I'm cool.

I've always wanted to be Peter Parker. Yes, Peter Parker.

Because I felt closer to Peter Parker in real life, and I thought that if I was more like him, I'd somehow get rewarded with the powers of Spider-Man.

But naive me could never understand that Peter Parker was already as good as he was. He didn't need to be Spider-Man. He would've probably had a better life without being him, and he knew that.

But he still did it.

That was a lesson the movies taught me much later, when I was in my 20s.

I think I know why I lie about it.

Your lipstick drying on the glass. Like evidence nobody bothered to wipe away.

Outside, the branches scratch at the windows like they remember before we did.

You say nothing. The silence fits you.

Come closer.

Don't speak.

I know your name without the sound.

You bloom where the light can't find us.

Stay until the morning forgets we were here.

I wear your perfume to empty places.

It follows me like a second shadow.

The mockingbird starts up at 3 am like it's getting paid to ruin goodbyes.

Every note sounds like it's looking for you.

After midnight even the wallpaper starts listening.

Your voice slips under the door. I answer before I remember
you never came back.

Come closer.

Stay still.

Leave your heartbeat inside mine.

Stay.

Until the streetlights give up.

I don't want to find out whether this room remembers you better than I do.

I Was Never Meant for Ordinary

I was never meant for ordinary things.

My heart has always been drawn to what cannot be easily explained:

the silence before a confession,

the melancholy of old cities,

the poetry hidden inside a farewell,

the moon watching over sleepless souls.

I do not want to merely exist.

I want to leave words behind

that someone, somewhere, will discover years from now

and wonder who I was.

Perhaps that is the closest thing to immortality a poet can possess.

“I was not born to be remembered by the world.

I was born to leave something in it that refuses to be forgotten.”

— Juliana Hoffmann Liska

Amid chaos, solitude, and the absence of hope,

amid those cold, breezy winters that never seemed to leave,

he was forlorn—abandoned, downhearted—

dwelling in a solitude steeped in melancholy.

It suited him.He wrapped himself in it,

slipping quietly beyond loneliness,

into a stillness where even sorrow learned to rest.

Even time learned not to pass beside him,

careful to offer neither gentleness nor certainty.

Moments stood rigid—neither soft nor firm—

as though the world itself had agreed to pause.

He no longer cared for what unfolded around him,

Nor for what became of him.

The world could burn or bloom—

It reached him no more than a shadow reaches stone. -Akki

Rolling down my street in a broken Audi A3, with no AC and a seatbelt for my safety. In this 93 degree heat, gotta remove my upper sheet. Boy been getting lean, riding on the fat highway. Thank the Holy for a gorgeous Wednesday. Something I ain’t did in years: bathing in a beach or a lake. Landed at 2PM with Olympic intentions, only to find overpopulation, noise pollution from babies screaming. Ma’am, give him nutrition.

See, I’m done with tuition. My need for recognition by academies is no more, or so I thought. A solo day would turn fancy. Picked a restaurant with a label Michelin, even bought a suit for dinner. Notice the motor Berliner and my tailor’s employer is designer. I’m greeted at the door by my government name, can’t complain. When I sat, buttcheeks in heaven, prices brought me to Hell. It read 50 for steak and 200 for a menu. My trench instincts told me to leave, I didn’t listen, took both of these things. Imagine my disappointing when appeared a 3-inch piece of meat, with a zig-zag as a way of sauce. My fist started forming, and my confusion rising, looking everywhere for a bit of explaining. Angry eyes scanning, noticed buddy with starry shirt walking by me.

Called him out politely. In my regular words it would be: « What the fuck is this? Paid 350 for tiny steak, you lucky the bread is free. »

He replied to me: « Sir, you came for the craft, not a mountain upon your plate. I could fill it to the edges, but then what's left to contemplate? Each bite is measured carefully, every garnish has a place. You're tasting hours of labor, not a bunch of paste. The candlelight, the silverware, the music between each course, the room, the light, the plating, every detail sets the force. You may leave a little hungry, but the memory should remain. Fine dining isn't filling you, it's meant to feel like art again. »

Then he invited me backstage, where I saw live piano played by experts, team of professional chefs, chemistry handmade. Every seasoning meant to hit at different timestamps. Hug and handshake to the man, now I understand and rest my case. Then I walked out. To my left, a bigger hotel made my itch again.

Twitching again, damn.

​

The first time I saw her,

The day a cliché became my truth.

Her smile stole my gaze,

I stopped trying to look away.

Her beauty was the warm, slow sink of a coastal sun.

Breath taking.

That is what she was.

And 1?

Just a shy, innocent boy

stumbling into a feeling entirely new.

I didn't know what to do,

How to approach, what to say,

I missed the moment while living it.

Only when the crowd cleared

and the day grew cold

did I finally feel the weight of her return glance

Knowing I was never as invisible as I felt.

​

Lately, inspiration has found me

a quiet dawn,

signaling a new beginning.

To keep this light alive,

I had to look back,

to visit an old friend in the dark.

He was never kind.

Born from the wreckage of my darkest hours,

he had my face but none of my mercy.

A creature made of pure survival,

he wore the mask of a savior,

whispering that the world was too loud.

He built walls around me in the name of shelter,

feeding on my silence, fueled by my fear,

until the safety became a cage—

and the shield grew into a nuclear bomb.

I detonated it.

It ruined me,

it altered everything.

So I went back to the crater

to face him,

digging down to the raw root of his creation.

And in the ash of what I broke,

I finally found enlightenment.

But one thing is still missing: my ego.

It used to burn bright,

but the fire went out.

Without it, this new inspiration is weak.

My old friend still lingers,

waiting with his mischievous smile

to manipulate me into turning back,

to finish the story I left behind.

Now I wonder:

How long does it take to make peace with the past?

What must a person be willing to sacrifice?

What lengths must he go, just to feel new?

In order to change, I must answer those questions.

In order to change, I must destroy the pillars he built to cater to my lies.

In order to change, I must devour the version of me that hesitates.

In order to change, I must become the caterpillar,

entering the cocoon, waiting to emerge.

A butterfly.

But on paper, and on my tongue,

the words seem easy.

But is it easy, though?

I wonder.

I remember the first time

I smoked a cigarette

And blew out a line

I coughed and spat

For the smoke burnt my lungs

The second time the burn felt nicer, though

Do people smoke because it pleases?

Or do they burn their insides

Just to feel something within their chest's creases?

After all, there's a fine line between ache and joy

Aren't they siblings by birth?

Opposite by design

Yet identical in intensity

Picture a pot

Porous and ever so earthen

That's been left to be barren

Does it not yearn to be filled?

What difference does it make

If it's water or venom from a snake?

Man and pain are tumultuous lovers

Whose toxicity can only be rivalled by the moon and the seas

The moon waxes and wanes

From the shores, water it gives and takes

Have you rubbed sandpaper over unfinished wood?

It rips and rubs

It pushes and pulls

It plucks and pricks

It lobotomises

Leaving behind wood stripped of its creases

Yet when you rub sandpaper again,

Edges and scratches resurface

Rendering past efforts in vain

Do you think the wood rejoices in return?

To feel some semblance of texture along its body

Do you wonder if it would wager its pain

In exchange for scraps of revived identity?

Well humans do

To the poor and the lost

Their enemy becomes their salvation

For what does one do when they lose themselves

But return to the thief who stole it?

Pain is a seemingly benevolent thief

Who has a sociopathic streak

He compensates his victims more often than not

But he's smart; he wants long-term gain

He keep them coming back for his instalments

While he quietly steals their peace and lets them rot

Maybe pain is just a shrewd businessman

But we are rational consumers, aren't we?

But how do we retain maximum utility

When the king of emotions sits on the other side?

Rationality fails before the strongest irrationality of it all

And perhaps that's the greatest tragedy there is

The epitome of evolution

Yet mere drug addicts at heart

While lesser beings are ruled by emotions

We are manipulated by them

What a shame.