When Power Turns to Discretion: Lessons from the Boat Strikes
In early September, the United States government began using military force against small boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. The descriptions of the people on those boats shifted from day to day. Sometimes they were called traffickers. Sometimes cartel members. Sometimes enemy combatants. What never changed was the fact that many were killed without arrest, without evidence presented to the public, and without any form of due process.
The Two Kinds of Freedom
What good is a library if you can’t read? The doors might be unlocked. No guard stops you from walking in. Every book is yours to open. On paper, you’re completely free.
But without the ability to read, that freedom is mostly imaginary. No one is preventing you from learning. You simply don’t have the means to use what’s in front of you. The permission is there. The possibility isn’t.
The Lure of Complexity, the Freedom of Simplicity
We often find ourselves tangled in the threads of complexity, drawn to the idea that a fuller life must be a more complicated one. It’s a deeply human instinct, this subtle pull toward filling our days with more commitments, more possessions, more friction. It’s as if complexity itself were a measure of meaning.
When Critical Thought Turns on You
Critical thought is almost always imagined as an outward act, a way of evaluating someone else’s claims, spotting the bias in their reasoning, exposing the flaws in their evidence. What’s almost never discussed is its inward form: using the same discipline to interrogate the architecture of our own beliefs.
You Were Never Meant to Be the Customer
In a system built on consumption, identity is no longer grounded in what we create, but in what we buy. The individual is not viewed as a generative force, but as a vessel for demand; a predictable recipient of ads, trends, and targeted offers. Even labor, once a mark of contribution, has been recast as a cost to be minimized. In this economy, you are not a producer. You are the market.
The Myth of the Big Leap
“I want to go part-time,” I say.
My manager sits across the desk, a slightly quizzical look on her face. I’ve been in a full-time position at this hospital for nearly fourteen years. I love what I do, but I’m burning out. I need more time to pursue my life.
She leans back, hesitant.
“How many hours do you want?”
“Three days, eight hours each day,” I tell her. Then I pause. “Three in a row.”
Because I know how this works. I know there will be some effort to control it, to fragment the time.
The Architecture of My Creative Life
I lean down and scratch Margo behind the ears. She squints her eyes and begins to purr. A moment ago, I was still in bed. Now I’m making my way downstairs, moving through the small rituals that begin the day: grinding the beans, filling the kettle, opening the shades to let the morning in. The windows are a little hazy and could probably use cleaning, but I’ve grown to like the way the light comes through, softened and quiet.
What If We Didn’t Need to Escape
We’ve been sold a shallow version of the good life.
It looks like a beach chair. A plane ticket. A glossy brochure offering two weeks of escape from a routine that quietly wears us down. The structure remains untouched, but for a brief moment, we are allowed to step outside it, if we’ve earned it, if we’ve saved enough, if we promise to return.