Inhibition is powerful
Nature Life
If I think back to a behavior to which I feel indebted, inhibition comes to mind — that conscious decision to choose the stairs over the elevator when you are tired, that moment of refusing company when you feel lonely, that gesture that makes you rearrange a fork after putting it down carelessly and in a hurry, cold water in winter, composure amidst euphoria. Not to make myself strong, but to flee from that ugliness which always accompanies the moments when compulsion wants to win over myself, when I was not myself when I was happy, when I was not myself when I was sad, and because of which you do things you wouldn't have done in another state of mind.
This habit has been with me since I was a child, back when I hadn't opened a single book yet. For me then, it was an entirely aesthetic matter: beautiful versus ugly. The ugly was the unconditional surrender to biological weakness; the beautiful was resistance, the vigilant and conscious choice.
Today, just a few days away from my 38th birthday, I realize that this attitude has helped me shape stability, and to live life closer to transcendence, in a constant rhythm of closeness to the Truth, which is subtle, and which the slightest wind can scatter. Today, I see fullness in the void, and emptiness in the full, and I feel alive observing a blank sheet of paper, or the obscurity.
The cover image represents one of the 99 names of God according to Islam, Al-Qabid* (The Restrainer), the one who restrains [or the one who constricts / the one who withholds]
