After decades of writing about technology, education, and human agency, I find myself drawn to more fundamental questions. I observe a Socratic pedagogy and question everything I thought I knew about life, and a recent vivid dream prompted deeper analysis.

I decided to record my fresh ideas and decided I’d publish them in the spirit of “never being afraid to hang my art on the wall”.

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I’ve lived long enough to witness the full arc of relationships — the blazing beginnings, the comfortable middle years, the slow dimming, sometimes the bitter endings. I have seen how we grasp, cling and try to hold onto what moves us most. I have watched friends disappear into the gravitational pull of romantic relationships, only to emerge years later, realising their identity had dissolved into something they could no longer recognise, until they decide they must reclaim who they once were. I’ve participated in this dance, believing it was simply how love and intimate relationships worked.

But recently, a vision has been haunting me — born from a dream, and a deeper recognition that comes after decades of living.

In the vision, I watched people moving through darkness, surrounded by luminous filaments that drift and dance. Some filaments glow with brilliant intensity, others emit only the faintest light, and some hang lifeless, their radiance long extinguished. These filaments represent our relationships, our connections with other human beings, and their degree of brightness reflects the vitality of those bonds.

In my vision, we move through this space like travellers in an otherworldly forest, sometimes brushing filaments aside as we pass, sometimes pausing to admire their beauty. The filaments float gently from somewhere above, their origins unknowable, their destinations uncertain.

We cannot grasp them — to try is to condemn them to darkness. We can only observe, appreciate, and allow them to drift freely.

The imagery came to me as a cherished filament began to dim. The relationship with my partner, once blazing with light, was slowly losing its luminescence, perhaps approaching extinction. I could have accepted it as the natural way of things. Instead, I chose to explore what this vision might teach us — and whether there could be a different way to live.

To Grasp is Futile

The central truth of the filaments is this: the moment we try to grasp them, we destroy them. It seems love truly flourishes in freedom. The relationships that glow brightest do so precisely because they exist unforced, uncaptured, allowed to drift and dance according to their preferred rhythms.

This runs counter to everything our culture teaches about love. We’re told that commitment means holding tight, that devotion requires possession, that “real love” means merger and exclusivity. But what if these attempts to secure love are what extinguish it?

Consider the paradox: the more desperately we cling to someone, the more they seem to slip away. The tighter we squeeze, the more the light dims. Our attempts to capture beauty destroy the very thing we’re trying to preserve.

The filament teaches us that love might be better understood as depth of appreciation rather than acquisition. Instead of asking “How can I keep this person?” we might ask “How deeply can I appreciate this moment of connection?”

The Courage of Abundance

Traditional relationships often become black holes — dense, inward-collapsing systems that pull everything into their gravitational field.

Identity, social circles, dreams, and even the capacity to see beauty elsewhere get sucked into the couple’s orbit until nothing exists outside their event horizon.

But what if we chose a different way? What if, instead of building our lives around securing a few precious connections, we built them around our capacity to recognise and appreciate beauty wherever it appears?

This requires tremendous courage because it asks us to bet our entire existence on a radical premise: that beauty is inexhaustible, that the source of wonder never runs dry, that we need never fear encountering the last perfect filament.

Most people are fearful in this regard. They would rather cling to a dimming filament than trust that more beauty will emerge. They squeeze the life out of what they claim to cherish because they’re terrified of existing without it. Their fear masquerades as love, but it’s the desperate clinging of someone who believes beauty is scarce and rationed.

The brave appreciator lives differently. They trust in the endless creativity of existence. They understand that releasing their grip doesn’t diminish their capacity for love — it expands it.

Falling vs. Standing

We speak of “falling in love” as if it were something that happens to us, a loss of control, a stumbling into overwhelming feeling. But what if falling in love is an act of fear — the panicked impulse that immediately moves us to capture and secure the beauty we’ve encountered.

True courage might be staying upright in the presence of beauty. To be moved by it, appreciating it fully, but not losing our balance or our trust in abundance. Not falling, but standing present with whatever intensity of beauty appears, knowing we can love it completely without needing to own it.

The brave person encounters the perfect filament and thinks, “How beautiful this is right now”, rather than “How can I keep this forever?”

To Live is to be an Appreciator

To live as an appreciator requires cultivating a profound form of self-control — not the rigid suppression of desire, but the disciplined choice to understand the difference between appreciating and acquiring. While grasping makes us slaves to our impulses, victims of our selfishness, appreciation develops our capacity for restraint in the presence of beauty. The appreciator learns that true mastery isn’t controlling others, but governing the response to what moves them.

Imagine living as a connoisseur of filaments — developing ever-greater sensitivity to the beauty around you while maintaining the discipline to keep your hands open. Your love wouldn’t be diminished by its transience; it would be made more precious by it.

This isn’t about loving less — it’s about loving more expansively. The stranger’s laugh on a train, the way morning light catches someone’s face, a moment of genuine connection with a colleague, the particular grace of someone you’re connected with as they move through the world — all become occasions for a form of love without the need for possession or permanence.

You become wealthy not through accumulation but through your capacity to recognise wealth everywhere. Each moment of released beauty creates space for new beauty to emerge. You discover that the source of wonder truly has no limits.

The Cycle is Endless

In this way of living, loss and transience aren’t tragedies to be avoided but natural rhythms to be embraced. Every dimming filament creates space for new luminescence. Every ending enables a fresh beginning. Every release deepens your capacity for appreciation.

The cycle of loss and transience and rebirth becomes something you want to participate in for as long as you live, because you understand it as life’s fundamental generosity — the way existence keeps creating new forms of beauty for those brave enough to see them.

Consider a New Ethos

What we’re describing here is nothing less than a new way of being human. An ethos based on abundance rather than scarcity, appreciation rather than acquisition, courage rather than neediness.

It asks us to become lovers of existence rather than prisoners of particular relationships. To develop the strength to hold beauty lightly, knowing that our gentle touch allows it to flourish while our grasping grip extinguishes it.

This doesn’t mean we love less deeply — we love more freely. We don’t commit less fully — we commit to something larger than any single relationship. We become devotees of beauty in all its forms, trusting that our reverent attention is itself a form of love worthy of a lifetime’s practice.

Now I have the luxury of perspective that perhaps only age can provide. I have loved deeply and lost. I have grasped tightly and watched beauty slip through my fingers. I have lived long enough to see the patterns, to recognise the futility of trying to stop time or capture what is meant to flow.

But I have also discovered that there is immense freedom in this recognition. The filaments drift, some bright, some dim, some waiting to be born. The question is not whether we can capture them, but whether we dare to let them illuminate our lives without demanding they stay forever.

In that choice between grasping and appreciating, between fear and trust, between scarcity and abundance, we discover a new way of loving, and a new way of being alive. It may have taken me decades to see this clearly, but perhaps that’s precisely the point — some wisdom can only be earned through the full experience of living.

About the Author: Greg Twemlow — © 2025 | All rights reserved. I write at the collision points of technology, education, and human agency, including:

Learning as Self-Authorship — Becoming the author of your learning, life, and legacy.
Creativity as a Sovereign Practice — Expressing what only you can bring into the world.
Agency in an Age of Intelligent Systems — Making decisive, value-aligned choices.
Remixing the World — Transforming existing ideas into new forms that inspire thoughtful examination.
Living in Alignment — Staying in tune with your values, ethics, and the people who matter.

Greg Twemlow, Designer of Fusion Bridge — Contact: greg@fusionbridge.org

Frequently Asked Questions Appendix — The Beauty We Hold and the Pain We Learn

Q: What do the filaments in your vision represent?
A: They symbolise our relationships — each filament’s brightness reflects the vitality of the bond. Some glow brilliantly, others fade, and some extinguish over time.

Q: Why do you say grasping at filaments extinguishes them?
A: Because trying to capture or control beauty and love suffocates them. Love flourishes in freedom, not in possession or fear.

Q: How does this view challenge traditional ideas of love?
A: Culture teaches us that devotion means holding tight and merging identities, but the essay argues that these attempts at possession often destroy the very connection we seek to preserve.

Q: What is meant by the “courage of abundance”?
A: It is the belief that beauty is inexhaustible — that releasing one filament does not diminish love, but expands our capacity to see and appreciate beauty in many forms.

Q: How does this perspective change the way we approach loss?
A: Loss becomes part of an endless cycle of renewal. Every ending creates space for new beauty, and every release deepens our ability to appreciate life’s generosity.

Q: What is the new ethos you propose?
A: A way of living rooted in appreciation rather than acquisition, courage rather than fear, and abundance rather than scarcity — becoming lovers of existence itself, not prisoners of relationships.