What I wrote previously about my relationship with Toronto during 2010-2015, and the subsequent deepening of that relationship during the following six years while away from the city, and my eventual return last year, places the burden of agency exclusively on me. After I finished writing, a different way of looking at those years and the relationship occurred to me. A way of looking that recognizes an agency that is external to me. What if,…
Living in Toronto during the five years of my graduate studies felt incomplete. I am not referring to the incompleteness of an unfinished story or an interrupted episode, but an incompleteness that would persist with any length of time. Because of that incompleteness, which is not in length, but in width or depth, leaving Toronto did not feel like losing something that belonged to me. It did not feel like a sudden distancing of something…
I wrote the following six short essays a while ago, and in somewhat of a haste. The haste came from knowing if I were to slow down, I’d not get to the end. There are some things you can do only in a rush, and those things tend not to be very pleasant. In any case, I’d like to return to them soon and see if I can reconsider some of my previous thoughts and…
My friend, Javier Rivera, has posted a video about the relationship between religion and philosophy. Specifically, he talks about the duty of philosophers to ask, “What is religion?” Javier points out the dominant tendency in philosophers to fixate on their own discipline, asking again and again, “What is philosophy?” but a similar kind of (philosophical) attention is rarely devoted to religion. What we need, Javier argues, is a philosophical interest and engagement with religion. Something…
Having a good conversation about a painful topic is bittersweet. Having a good conversation about loss, for instance, has sweetness mixed with the core bitterness of the topic, and I think the sweetness comes from the truth we discover and the understanding we come to share. Even loss–and our attention to loss–can become a way of connecting with others, a way of discovering and sharing insights. A few days ago, I listened to a recent…