my father taught me many things. some lessons became part of who i am. others became the very beliefs i chose to leave behind.

he believed a man’s place was outside the home, earning money. women, in his eyes, belonged inside it. he believed boys shouldn’t cry because tears made them weak.

for years, i assumed those beliefs were simply part of becoming a man.

then i grew older.

his worldview wasn’t entirely wrong—it was simply built on boundaries i no longer believe should exist.

i don’t think responsibility has a gender.

providing for a family isn’t exclusively a man’s duty, just as caring for a home isn’t exclusively a woman’s.

and i’ve never understood why tears are treated as a failure of masculinity.

if prophets—people remembered for their faith, courage, and unwavering devotion—could cry in moments of immense sorrow, then perhaps tears have never been evidence of weakness.

perhaps they’re evidence that we’re human.

for a long time, i believed children were supposed to inherit everything their parents gave them.

their names.

their habits.

their values.

their fears.

so i did what every child does. at that time i accepted every lesson my father placed in my hands.

conservatism wasn't simply one of his beliefs—it seemed to run through his veins.

i was sent to a school i never wanted to attend. even as a child, i could sense it wasn’t where i belonged academically. “every school is the same,” he insisted.

it wasn’t.

years later, i was competing for admission to my dream university, i found myself standing beside students who had spent years in institutions that opened doors mine never could.

that’s when I realized something painful. i wasn’t only competing against other students.i was competing against years of opportunities i never had.

and i couldn't help asking myself:

how much of our lives do we truly choose when our earliest choices were never ours to make?

there wasn’t much i could do except continue walking through a life i hadn’t entirely chosen.

i became someone who second-guessed everything—not because i lacked confidence, but because i was desperate not to inherit the parts of my father that had hurt me the most.

because if i stop examining myself, i might become the very person i’ve spent my whole life trying not to resemble.

failure no longer meant losing.

failure meant repeating him.

i wasn’t the only child shaped by those beliefs.

my older brother was raised to believe that obedience was the highest form of love. So he follows every word our parents said without question.

in my culture, we’re often taught that contradicting your parents invites misfortune—as if questioning them is not only disrespectful, but dangerous.

but what happens when the very things you’re asked to obey no longer make sense?

are you still expected to follow them simply because they’re your parents?

i watched those beliefs settle inside my brother.

slowly.

quietly.

he grew into someone who struggled to express what he truly felt. "no" became a word he rarely allowed himself to say.

and it broke my heart.

instead, he learned to surrender before life had even asked him to. his favorite phrases became: “we’ll figure it out later” or “let’s just see where life takes us”

some people call that acceptance. i call it the quiet tragedy of someone who was never encouraged to ask,

“what do you want?”

nothing hurts me more than watching a child grow into an adult who no longer knows what he wants—not because he lacks dreams, but because he was never given permission to have them.

perhaps some of you have assumed that my father is my role model.

he isn’t.

i know every human being is living life for the first time. none of us arrives with a manual. mistakes are inevitable.

but there is a difference between making mistakes and refusing to question the lessons you pass on. because words shape people. beliefs shape lives.

some lessons don’t leave bruises.

they leave identities that take years to rebuild.

one day, after years of silence, i finally reached my limit.

i told him everything.

every fear. every disappointment. every question I’d never dared to ask.

he didn't hear me.

before i could finish a sentence, he interrupted. before i could explain my pain, he reminded me how much harder his own life had been.

every conversation found its way back to his past. my future never seemed to have a place in it. everything stopped at his past. but my life was still moving toward a future he refused to see.

that’s when i realized that some people become so consumed by surviving yesterday that they lose the ability to see the person standing in front of them today.

the tragedy is that the person standing in the way of that future wasn’t a stranger.

it was my father.

perhaps the question i've been trying to figure out the most is: what if God chooses me to be alone forever?

before dawn broke and while the world remained asleep, a question quietly settled into my thoughts. it wasn't a question born of doubt in God's plan. it was the unsettling thought that what i feared could just as easily happen to me—or to any one of you.

i don't say this simply because the thought crossed my mind. i say it because it's been my reality. ever since i was young, i've found it difficult to define love. i was raised in a home where affection was often overshadowed by restraint, and somewhere along the way, i lost any clear understanding of what loving someone was supposed to look like. so i searched for it elsewhere—in books, in films, in the lyrics of songs that seemed to understand what i couldn't and in the lives of people who had loved, lost, and learned to live with both.

still, every lesson ended the same way.

beneath everything i learned lingered the quiet conviction that i wasn't yet capable of loving someone well.

what if i keep trying, keep loving, keep hoping… and still never find a love that lasts?

looking around, i've noticed many different kinds of men in love, but there are two patterns i keep coming back to.

the first is the man who mistakes urgency for certainty. he falls in love quickly and throws himself into it completely, willing to sacrifice almost anything for the woman he loves.

but i've come to wonder whether effort alone is enough. because no matter how much he gives, he never stops to ask a more difficult question: does she truly love him back? or does she simply feel guilty walking away after everything he's done for her?

to me, this is where the imbalance begins. his greatest fear isn't building the wrong relationship—it's ending up alone. and in chasing the comfort of having someone beside him, he often overlooks the one thing that matters most: how she genuinely feels.

and that's where i believe something essential is lost.

the second type is almost the opposite. he moves carefully. he doesn't rush people, and he refuses to force what isn't ready to happen. if i'm being honest, this is the kind of man i see myself becoming.

what matters most to him isn't constant reassurance, but mutual trust. not because every gesture must be repaid, but because trust should never flow in only one direction.

imagine something as simple as this: he asks for a little time alone to recharge. instead of understanding, she’s convinced it means he no longer loves her. i’d imagine he’d begin questioning something much bigger than that single disagreement.

“if we can’t trust each other in moments this ordinary, what are we really building?”

i wouldn't blame him for walking away. it may sound like an extreme conclusion, yet i've come to believe that the smallest conflicts often expose the biggest truths.

and i couldn’t stop asking myself:

why invest so much in loving someone when neither of you can know if you’re each other’s forever?

has that made me afraid of love?

i'd be lying if i said no.

i’ve rehearsed every worst-case scenario my mind could possibly invent. eventually, i reached a place where i made peace with a thought that once terrified me—that perhaps God created me to walk through life alone.

people often say love finds us when we least expect it. i want to believe them. i just can’t seem to imagine it happening to me.

these days, the idea of organically meeting someone feels impossible.

when i picture my future, marriage is the one scene that never seems to appear.

there are moments when i convince myself that perhaps my purpose isn't to experience love, but to help other people understand theirs.

life, after all, is built on uncertainty—just like the feelings i’ve been carrying lately. but i've learned to recognize the subtle difference between genuine love and the quiet desperation of simply needing someone to stay.

the future refuses to reveal itself. it may bring a love that changes everything, or it may take someone away before i ever understand why they left.

growing up isn’t learning how to love. maybe it’s realizing that being born to be alone isn’t the worst thing that could happen.

loving the wrong person is.

one month ago, i went abroad to pursue one of my dreams. before that, i spent a night or two at my home, trying to reclaim a sense of peace. everything looks normal. the flight went smooth and nothing seems wrong.

when i first set foot in germany, the country i had long dreamed of, i found myself at a loss for words. the feeling defied description, as though language itself had fallen short. yet one thing was unmistakably clear: joy had risen above everything else.

the berlin wall, the brandenburg gate, and every place i had once only imagined—i had finally seen them all.

but none of that was what lingered with me the most.

before i catch my flight, my friends placed a microphone in my hands as a farewell gift. it was more than a present—it was a thread that kept us close. so, with a heart full of gratitude, i tried to carry them with me. through every frame i recorded, i wanted them to stand beside me and to witness the quiet wonder of Germany through my eyes. if they couldn’t be there with me, then perhaps my videos could become the closest thing to being there.

i truly was happy then. i really was. and being surrounded by people who loved me deeply, even though not a single one of them shared my blood.

vancouver sleep clinic really represent my feeling with those lyric in their single “Someone To Stay”. perhaps some of you know this feeling, and perhaps you don’t. it’s the kind of happiness that carries guilt in its shadow, until the two quietly dissolve into one another.

ironic, isn’t it?

this was the dream i had longed for, but i wanted my parents to feel it too. i wanted all my friends to know what it was like.

it didn’t feel right to experience it alone.

some joys are meant to be shared.