Confession Raises the Entropy of a Friendship
A conversation this week taught me something about what I actually long for. I’m drawn to deep conversations — about the meaning of life, why we’re here, what any of it is for. And I realized that what I’ve been searching for lives in friendship, not romance. I believe love can exist fully inside a friendship. When I find a person I don’t want to lose, my instinct isn’t to make them a partner.
Because confession is destructive in a very particular way. A romantic confession transforms the base into something that can’t be converted back — like entropy: once disorder increases, more effort gets you complexity, never the original form. You can’t un-say it. The friendship you had, the one worth keeping, is exactly the thing the confession consumes as fuel.
And yet here’s my unease: some confessions aren’t romantic at all, and they still raise the temperature. This week I had one of the deepest philosophical conversations of my life with someone I work with — no romantic pull whatsoever, which is precisely why it worked. We talked about fate and free will; whether God wants to be understood through reason or met through trust and surrender (“sami’na wa ata’na”); why we pray; which of the many paths within Islam leads where it promises; whether learning about the world and asking ultimate questions are complements or competitors, or whether we should pursue both in parallel to hedge our risk; even whether God has a sense of humor — because if He doesn’t, we’re all in trouble. It was the kind of talk I’d only ever imagined having. It solved nothing in the world, and I felt full anyway.
Or so I told myself. Honestly? Not satisfied. Part of me suspects it was a trap. Maybe questions that heavy belong to solitude. Maybe they burden the other person. Maybe speaking them aloud strips away their mystery, and what loses its mystery eventually loses its fun. Then I catch myself rationalizing: perhaps I exist to test people’s convictions, a kind of examiner whose questions, if survived, lead somewhere higher. But I don’t want to be anyone’s devil.
What the week left me with is mostly gratitude and confusion about prayer. I’m risk-averse to the point of praying for everyone’s happiness — but I’ve started doubting that happiness is what everyone needs. Some philosophers seem to have wanted significance more than comfort; they needed unhappiness the way others need joy. So how do I pray for people whose good I can’t define? I don’t know what’s best for them, or for me. I just want clarity — and I ask for it knowing humans were created with a hasty nature.
So I settle on the smallest honest prayer: give us what is best. And I stay thankful. It was a good week.
Drafted with AI assistance from my personal journal (2024-11-02), then edited by me. See On AI Assistance.