Feature image by Yuting Gao
HOF — I’ve reached an age where I see aging as climbing a mountain. The higher we climb, the less we have — fewer resources, narrower footing, thinner air. The climb strips us of everything nonessential, leaving only what truly matters. And it’s precisely that scarcity that sharpens our appreciation. At the summit, we can look over the vast landscape — and at the few precious things we’ve kept — and feel proud.
That’s what 37 feels like.
For me, there are three things worth carrying to the very end: freedom, friendship, and truth. Everything else comes and goes, but these three are a lasting interdependent trinity. To be free, you must be true to yourself. And in a world crowded with social, economic, and political constraints, only friends will truly tolerate — even celebrate — your freedom and your truth.
Is family less important?
That depends on whether they are also your friends. If your family doesn’t offer you truth or freedom, then they’re simply relatives. Most people move away from parents, drift from siblings, fail in marriages, and watch their children grow into the same pattern. Family members can come and go. Friends are for life.
Ten years ago, I met Hope on a dating platform. We clicked immediately, and she crossed Austria to meet me. There was instant romance, but I was a temporary university student in a foreign land. I had newly arrived from a war-torn country, still untangling myself from a five-year long-distance relationship across frontlines. That relationship had taught me the virtue — and the pain — of not only holding on to someone I love, but also letting go, giving both of us a chance at freedom and survival.
I couldn’t face another long-distance relationship, so I asked for friendship instead. She accepted, though I know it puzzled her.
A decade later, we find ourselves in an era of fragmented belonging — our lives scattered across geographies and routines, bound more by memory than by presence. Yet our friendship has not only survived the distance, it has deepened. Time and space have only proved the point: friendship is rooted in unconditional acceptance. True friends accept you as you are, and when you change. They accept you when you’re close, and when you’re far. When you call every day, or not for a year.
Last weekend, after weeks of silence, Hope sent me a message. She’d been scrolling through her digital notes and found something I’d written to her when we first got to know one another:
“The universe — it’s a crazy thing — always expanding, always exploding, always falling apart. Yet humans try to take small pieces of it and force them to stay together. We’re afraid of change because we’re afraid of failure. But in my experience, when people don’t make the change, the change happens to them and leaves them no choice. And when that happens, they adapt. We are strange creatures. We wait for things to explode before we deal with them, instead of preventing the explosion.”
That was ten years ago. I’d forgotten writing it — and, truth be told, I needed the reminder.
One of the worst parts of aging is losing memory. I won’t get into it — linked below is a brilliant Johnny Harris video essay that says it better. But one of the best parts of friendship is that our friends remind us of who we were when we were young — the values we once believed in, before they were buried under years of human artificial struggles.
I’d written those words to Hope after five years of uprising and war in Syria. Back then, I’d learned that holding on doesn’t always mean preserving something. And letting go doesn’t always mean abandoning it.
One of humanity’s deepest flaws is that we’re clever enough to understand the laws of the universe, yet foolish enough to think we can defy them. Our galaxy, our solar system, the very atoms that form us are governed by gravity and motion. From cosmic constellations to quantum quarks, everything is separated by gulfs of spacetime so vast that light itself may take millions of years to cross — yet they still gather into clusters, stars, planets, and life. They do so without contracts or obligations, bound only by a universal law of free will. When Hope sent me her recent message, it felt like the universe was circling back — a quiet epiphany in a world coming undone.
Nations, societies, and families fall when they fight gravity. Friendship endures because it glides with it.
Be true, be free, be smart. Don’t take it for granted.
Relevant links
Johnny Harris: How to Remember Your Life
House of Salted Caramel
Unappreciated
Feature image:
Silhouette of Two Persons Stargazing
Elkton, VA, United States
by Yuting Gao
Roumani Line 