Standing Without Winning

There was a time when I believed that clarity required alignment—
that if I stood somewhere clearly enough, others would eventually stand there too.

If not immediately,
then through explanation, patience, or proof.

I don’t hold that belief anymore.

What has settled for me is simpler and quieter:

where others stand
has no relation to where I stand.

This is not withdrawal.
It’s not indifference.
It’s not superiority.

It’s the relief of no longer carrying responsibility for how
truth, as I know it to be,
is received.

I’ve come to see that much of what shaped me—
teachers, schools, symbols, relationships—
were never destinations.

They were conditions.

They created friction, unease, contrast.
They seeded something that could only stabilize later,
and only from the inside.

Those seeds don’t belong to me.
And they don’t need tending.

People gather by resonance.
They always have.

Small contingents form and dissolve.
Some paths overlap for a time;
others diverge without resolution.

None of this requires correction.

What matters now is not who understands, agrees, or follows—
but how I stand while offering what has come to clarity.

I no longer feel compelled to win others over,
to justify my language,
or to prove coherence by consensus.

Writing, for me, is no longer an attempt to secure meaning.
It’s a way of letting it circulate.

Being human, I’m learning, does not require alignment.
It requires honesty without management.

So this is where I stand:

not as an authority,
not as a guide,
not as a keeper of outcomes—

but as someone willing to offer what is true,
and release it from my care.

What happens next doesn’t belong to me.

And that, finally, feels right.