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I write this at Christmastime, when the air itself seems thick with religious language. The word Christ is everywhere—on storefronts, playlists, political speeches, charity campaigns, and social media posts—yet I cannot escape the feeling that the figure whose birth we celebrate has never been more absent. Christmas has become a season of Christian noise and Christian branding, but rarely of Christian danger. And if there is one thing that early Christianity unquestionably was, it was dangerous. ...

I have spent enough nights staring at the ceiling with my phone face down on the bed to know the choreography of modern heartbreak advice by heart. First comes the injunction to “focus on yourself,” as if the self were a neglected houseplant that simply needs watering. Then the call to “cut them off completely,” spoken with the zeal of a detox guru. After that, the monetized compassion: courses, podcasts, threads, coaches, and neatly captioned reels promising closure in ten steps. I have followed these instructions with the earnestness of a good student, and I have watched them fail me with the consistency of a bad superstition. What troubles me now is not only that the advice often fails, but that it fails in a hypocritical way—asking us to be both human and not human at the same time. ...

“După ce am descoperit că viaţa nu are nici un sens, nu ne rămâne altceva de făcut decât să-i dăm un sens.” — Lucian Blaga “After we have discovered that life has no meaning, there is nothing left to do but to give it one.” I return to this sentence of Lucian Blaga the way one returns to a familiar crossroads: not because I expect the signposts to change, but because I have. Each time I arrive, I stand there slightly older, slightly more worn, slightly more awake. The words remain deceptively simple, almost blunt, yet they contain a depth that seems to expand the more I live with them. They do not console me. They do not promise anything. They simply describe a task—perhaps the task—that falls to us once certain illusions have burned away. ...