Life's Paradox
Someone can be drowning in silence,
and we would never know.
The waves they struggle against are invisible,
their cries—
translated into words too small
for the weight they carry.
Pain has a language no tongue can speak,
a shadow no light can name.
We spread our own scars
and yet we forget:
we are not the only ones who bleed.
When we compare,
the world overflows with faces,
but when we suffer,
we feel alone
in an empty room
with the echo of our own heartbeat.
I wish it would end—
this silent storm of misunderstanding,
this blindness shrouded in noise.
Empathy was a whisper in every heart,
a birthright, not a gift.
Now it feels like a superpower:
rare, fragile, fading.
But oh—
we were born to feel.
It's what made us human.
It's what still keeps us alive.
Will we ever loosen the strings
that keep us from becoming
who we truly are?
It’s a question that returns to me
like a quiet tide —
in the pause between heartbeats,
in the corners of ordinary days,
when my thoughts drift toward
the invisible threads that tether us all.
Each of us is bound by something —
a person we once loved,
a place that still hums our name,
an object heavy with memory,
a feeling that lingers like perfume
long after the moment has passed.
These ties, we believe, shape us —
they give our stories texture and form,
they teach us how to ache,
how to belong.
And yet, how often they tighten
until we can scarcely breathe,
their weight pulling us away
from the wide horizon of our own becoming.
To let go —
what a fragile, terrifying grace that is.
It is not always a severing,
not the violent cutting of cords,
but a soft unthreading.
A learning to hold lightly
what once defined us completely.
A surrender to the unfolding —
to the truth that what we love
does not need to cage us
to remain a part of us.
Maybe freedom isn’t found
in escaping these strings,
but in dancing with them —
knowing when to pull close,
when to release,
when to simply let them hum
in the wind of our becoming.
For the soul is not meant to be still.
It is a tide, a song, a flame —
forever reaching,
forever shedding,
forever becoming
itself.
Credits:
Photographer: Jianbo Wang
Models: Ái-Vi Phong, Bunu Álvarez
Creative direction & Styling: Bunu Álvarez