We don't fear those who hate us
Published on July 13, 2026Let’s be honest, we don’t fear those who hate us but those who love us.
Not with a silly, blind love, letting things slide, looking the other way. No, with simple love, true and unashamed, which sees through, which “sees with”, a gaze from which one cannot hide.
That’s what we’re afraid of.
Of the one who brings us back to what we are without escape, without excuses, without resistance but without convenience either.
Brutal observation.
This morning, over his toast, he looked at me like that.
He had just asked me a question, I had just answered: “It’s a long story”.
He looked at me and pointed his gaze. “I imagine” he said.
And there, the long story hit me right in the heart.
Because these long stories that explain or excuse the current state of our debris and our construction sites, as long as no one wants to hear them, they do not exist for real.
Our long stories, as long as others shorten them, summarize them erroneously or diminish them, we can always claim to be misunderstood, say that “there is something else”, something vague we can’t quite name, as an exit door to relief, away from what actually took place. And just like that we keep carrying stories without acknowledging them, as if they were unknown ghosts.
But this morning, his look, his presence, and the tone of his voice didn’t say “I imagine”, they said: “I feel you, I believe you”. There was almost an “I too have long stories and I know they are true.”
That’s when the long story like an arrow, long bamboo stalk cut into a point, slowly, but surely, with the same calm as the tone of his voice, penetrated my heart, and remained there.
I often appear fearless given that at night, irritated people, lost, in combat with their own demons, do not scare me. In front of them, I pass incognito, no risk that they will attack me, they don’t see me.
But he – he and each of those looks like his, this humanity which rejects nothing, which embraces everything, which connects – frightens me. Because with him there is no hiding place. There are no claws to stick out, nothing to fight against, just wounds to lick.
to Angelo