The Strategy of Softness - Thawing the Freeze Response Amidst the Global Winter
December 5th. Afternoon. The afternoon stretches out slowly, gray and heavy, as if time itself has lost the desire to move forward, stalled in some intermediate zone of twilight and expectation. The light in the room is scarce, muted, and in this half-shadow, I sit and look at my hands. They are here, before me, physically present, yet I feel them strangely alien, as if the blood has retreated from them, afraid to reach the periphery of my being. They are cold. Not just superficially chilled, but deeply, bone-chillingly cold, as if they carry the memory of a long winter that is not a season, but a state of mind. My whole body is encased in an invisible embrace of ice, in a tormenting, paralytic state of 'not having.' Until now, I thought I was simply exhausted, that I had surrendered in the face of a difficult daily life. But today, in the heavy silence of this afternoon, as the street noise fades behind the windowpane, I grasped the cruel, yet liberating, truth about what ...
