There are chapters in Scripture that read like a single beam of light, piercing straight through us. But Luke 9 does something different. It unfolds like a mountain range. You climb one moment, descend the next, and before you can steady your breath, another summit rises in front of you. It is a chapter of contrast, collision, confrontation, and calling. It is a chapter where the disciples glimpse glory, then trip over their own confusion. It is a chapter where Jesus reveals the cost of following Him, not with gentle suggestions, but with firm clarity that shakes the dust off our illusions. And maybe that is why this chapter still haunts our modern faith—because everything in it whispers the truth we resist: that faith isn’t a moment; it’s miles. And we are always being invited to take another step.

Luke 9 opens with commissioning—Jesus sending out His disciples with authority, purpose, and power. But it’s not the commissioning we often imagine. They weren’t given comfortable tools, safety nets, or predictable outcomes. They were told to take nothing. No staff. No bag. No bread. No money. No backup plan. That alone would terrify most believers today. Everything in our world tells us to prepare, accumulate, and secure ourselves. Yet Jesus sends His followers out stripped of every earthly reassurance. Because the moment you lose your props, you discover where your foundation truly sits.

There’s a truth buried in that moment that modern faith desperately needs to recover. Jesus didn’t send them out empty-handed; He sent them out empty of the illusion that the hand of God ever depends on what we carry. Every disciple in Luke 9 had to learn the same lesson: God moves through those who stop trying to save themselves with substitutes. Jesus didn’t call them to walk light—He called them to walk free.

But Luke presses forward, and suddenly the scene shifts to Herod, perplexed, threatened, unsure of who Jesus is. It’s almost humorous how much power trembles in the presence of truth it cannot control. Herod heard the rumors—some said John had risen, others said Elijah had returned. Even kings panic when heaven disrupts their narrative. And in that, we’re reminded that spiritual upheaval is not a sign of something going wrong; it’s often a sign that God is getting close.

But then we reach the hillside, the crowds, and the humbling moment of humanity stretching too far. Five thousand men, not counting women and children, stand before the disciples hungry. And the disciples’ solution is the same one we default to: send them away. Let them fend for themselves. Let the world take care of its own needs. How often do we pray for miracles while quietly hoping God will send the need somewhere else?

Then Jesus answers with one line that dismantles the excuse-making part of our soul: You give them something to eat.

It is a confronting sentence. It demands courage. It demands responsibility. It forces us to look at our hands—not to see what we lack, but to discover what God is willing to multiply. And yet, the disciples immediately list the impossibilities: we have only five loaves and two fish. Only. It is always the word of limitation. It is the word that anchors us in smallness rather than surrender. And Jesus says, Bring it here.

Five loaves, two fish, thousands fed. But perhaps the real miracle wasn’t the food—perhaps the miracle was the disciples realizing that impossibility is often the doorway God chooses to walk through.

Then comes the conversation that defines Christianity. Jesus looks at His disciples and asks the question that reaches past the centuries into every human soul: Who do you say that I am?

Peter answers with conviction, but not yet comprehension. The Messiah. Yes—but not the Messiah Peter imagined. Because the Messiah he wanted would conquer Rome. The Messiah walking with them came to conquer death. The Messiah Peter expected would raise an army. The Messiah he received would raise a cross. And then Jesus says something so disruptive that even today believers read it and try to soften it: If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

Not deny a habit. Not deny a luxury. Not deny a small convenience. Deny self.

In our age of branding, self-care, self-expression, and self-protection, these words can feel abrasive. But Jesus isn’t attacking human worth—He’s dismantling human lordship. The self makes a terrible king. It is too fragile, too fearful, too demanding, too easily wounded. And yet we try to build life around it. Jesus calls us to step out of that prison.

But then, as if to pull back the veil just long enough to prevent despair, Luke 9 takes us up a mountain. And there, in an explosion of light, Jesus is transfigured. His face changes, His clothing becomes dazzling, and Moses and Elijah appear, speaking with Him. Humanity always needs a glimpse of glory before it can endure the weight of obedience. God knows that without revelation, responsibility feels impossible.

Peter, overwhelmed and unsure, suggests building three shelters. It is the instinct we all have when confronted with overwhelming divine beauty: freeze the moment. Preserve it. Stay where the glory feels safe. But Jesus did not come to build tents on mountains. He came to build a kingdom in the valleys. The glory was not meant to be kept—it was meant to be carried.

And as the cloud surrounds them, the voice of God speaks: This is My Son, whom I have chosen; listen to Him. That single sentence exposes the root of every spiritual struggle. We listen to culture. We listen to fear. We listen to the inner critic. We listen to doubt. We listen to the voices that sound like us but lead us nowhere. Yet heaven booms with clarity: listen to Him.

But the moment they descend the mountain, the disciples meet a child possessed by a destructive spirit—and the disciples cannot cast it out. They had just witnessed heaven open, but their faith could not stand under pressure. And it is here that Luke 9 drills into the tension every believer lives with: glory is easy on the mountain, but warfare waits in the valley.

Jesus heals the boy, rebukes the spirit, and then does something most of us are still recovering from: He rebukes His disciples too. You unbelieving and perverse generation. Jesus wasn’t insulting them—He was awakening them. Sometimes the truth that stings is the truth that saves.

Then He tells them something that burrows deep into the human heart: The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. The disciples don’t understand. Worse, the text says it was hidden from them. Sometimes understanding is withheld not to confuse us but to prepare us. God often lets truth sit like a seed under the soil until the season arrives for revelation.

But here is where Luke 9 becomes painfully human. Right after Jesus speaks of His suffering, the disciples argue over who is the greatest. The contrast feels almost embarrassing. Jesus is describing sacrifice; they are debating status. But isn’t that the same tension we see today? People want influence without intimacy with God. They want platforms without surrender. They want crowns without crosses. And Jesus quietly brings a child beside Him and says: Whoever welcomes this little one welcomes Me. In the kingdom of God, greatness is measured not by how high you climb but by how deeply you stoop to serve.

But the chapter keeps unfolding, and the tests keep coming. John tells Jesus, We saw someone driving out demons in Your name and tried to stop him because he is not one of us. The human need to control who God can use has not faded in two thousand years. And Jesus dismantles their boundaries with one line: Whoever is not against you is for you. Heaven has never been threatened by diversity of calling—only by hearts that try to own what God is doing.

Yet the chapter saves some of its most piercing truth for last. Jesus sets His face toward Jerusalem. That phrase alone is a sermon. Determination. Focus. Resolve. Purpose that does not flinch. And as He moves toward the city of His suffering, the disciples respond with fire, literally. When a Samaritan village refuses to welcome Jesus, James and John ask if they should call down heaven’s flames. Their instinct is destruction; Jesus’ instinct is redemption. And He rebukes them.

Then comes one of the most sobering sequences in the New Testament. Three would-be followers approach Jesus, each eager, each sincere, and each revealing a condition in their commitment. One says he will follow Jesus anywhere, and Jesus responds with stark honesty: Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head. Jesus is saying, I will lead you into purpose, but I will not lead you into predictability.

Another asks to bury his father first, an expression that meant waiting until the father died someday in the future. Jesus replies, Let the dead bury their own dead. It’s not cruelty; it’s clarity. Some people spend so long waiting for the perfect timing that they die standing still.

Another wants to say goodbye to his family first, and Jesus gives the final cut to the conditions people place on obedience: No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. Meaning, God doesn’t call half-hearted wanderers—He calls forward-moving disciples who refuse to negotiate backward.

These final words expose the undercurrent of the entire chapter: the kingdom of God advances through those who refuse to drag their past into their calling. You cannot plow a straight line while staring behind you.

Luke 9 is not a chapter that invites comfortable Christianity. It is a chapter that confronts us. It forces us to examine our motives, our fears, our attachments, our excuses, and the places where our faith stalls out. But it also fills us with the strange courage of knowing that Jesus does not choose the impressive—He chooses the willing. He does not choose the flawless—He chooses the teachable. He does not choose the already transformed—He chooses the ones who are ready to follow Him up the mountain, down the valley, and all the way to the cross.

And the beauty of Luke 9 is that it mirrors the modern believer’s journey more precisely than we’d like to admit. We want power like the disciples were given at the beginning of the chapter. We want clarity like the revelation Peter received. We want mountaintop moments like the Transfiguration. We want authority like the healing of the boy. But we wrestle with doubt. We debate status. We misunderstand purpose. We resist sacrifice. We look back when we should move forward. And Jesus keeps walking, inviting us into the kind of life we were always meant to live.

Luke 9 does not simply end; it lingers. It keeps reaching into you long after the chapter closes. It is a mirror, a map, and a measuring rod—revealing who we are, where we are standing, and what still needs to change inside us if we are ever to walk the miles Jesus calls us to walk. And somewhere deep inside this chapter, under the transfiguration light and the dust of the valley floor, under the arguments about greatness and the warnings about the cost of following Him, the real heartbeat emerges: discipleship is not a spectator sport. It is a journey of transformation where hesitation must die if destiny is ever going to live.

But to understand the full weight of Luke 9, we have to sit inside the emotional texture of what Jesus is doing. He isn’t building an institution. He isn’t recruiting consumers. He isn’t gathering fans. He is shaping carriers of the kingdom. And the shaping is costly because the calling is costly. This chapter compresses the entire pattern of discipleship: revelation, resistance, misunderstanding, breakthrough, correction, surrender, and the steady forward motion of divine purpose. And maybe that is the greatest truth Luke 9 forces upon us: spiritual growth rarely comes in straight lines.

It comes in leaps and stumbles. It comes in clarity and confusion. It comes in the mountain highs and the valley lows. It comes in the tension of wanting glory while resisting the path that leads to it.

Think of Peter for a moment. He declares Jesus as the Messiah with boldness. He stands in revelation. He hears the voice of God on the mountain. He watches the impossible unfold before his eyes. Yet in the same breath of the same chapter, he misunderstands purpose, misreads the moment, and defaults to his own instincts. Peter is the disciple who shows us that revelation does not erase humanity; it illuminates the path we must now learn to walk.

And isn’t that exactly where many believers still live today? Caught between the revelation of who Jesus is and the wrestling of becoming who we are called to be. Luke 9 is not a story about perfect disciples. It is a story about invited disciples—called not because they were ready but because they were willing. Jesus didn’t choose them for their strength; He chose them for their surrender.

The conversation about the cross, though, is what sharpens the edge of the entire chapter. Jesus tells His disciples plainly that He would suffer, be rejected, be killed, and be raised. But notice the order. He doesn’t begin with resurrection. He begins with reality. The resurrection will come, but first the cross must be embraced. And the cross He asks His followers to carry is not symbolic. It is daily surrender. Daily obedience. Daily willingness to choose God’s way over our own impulses. Jesus wasn’t painting a poetic metaphor; He was building the backbone of Christianity.

But here is where Luke 9 becomes urgently relevant to our age. Today’s faith culture often preaches comfort, convenience, and blessing without sacrifice. It teaches that following God is about fulfilling personal dreams rather than dying to self. Yet Jesus calls us to something more rugged, more demanding, more glorious. He doesn’t sugarcoat the journey. He does not hide the cost. He says plainly: If you cling to your life, you will lose it. But if you lose your life for My sake, you will find it.

This is not a threat; it’s liberation. The life we cling to is too small. The life He gives is too large to fit inside our fear. Luke 9 is the reminder that spiritual power grows in proportion to spiritual surrender. The more we release, the more He fills. The more we let go, the more heaven moves.

But perhaps the hardest moment in the chapter is the failure of the disciples to cast out the spirit tormenting the boy. They had been given authority. They had seen miracles. They had witnessed divine power firsthand. So why did they fail? Luke does not give a technical explanation because the issue wasn’t technique—it was trust. Jesus’ rebuke was not about incompetence; it was about unbelief. Their hands reached toward heaven, but their hearts hesitated. Power without dependence collapses. Authority without intimacy thins out into frustration. This moment is the sober reminder that past victories do not guarantee present power. Yesterday’s faith cannot fight today’s battles. You must stay filled, stay anchored, stay surrendered.

Then there is the argument about greatness—an argument that unfolds in earshot of Jesus. They were following the Son of God while debating who among them was the most important. And Jesus answers the dispute not with a lecture, but with a child. A small, overlooked, humble presence. A symbol of vulnerability. In the kingdom of God, greatness is not in being celebrated but in being surrendered. Status is not measured by position but by posture. The kingdom does not advance with egos; it advances with servants whose hands stay open and hearts stay low.

But the entire chapter begins shifting the moment Jesus sets His face toward Jerusalem. This turning is more than geographical. It is spiritual. It marks a shift in tone, in momentum, in mission. From this moment on, Jesus’ path tightens. Distraction dies. Delay dies. Hesitation dies. Purpose hardens into resolve. The chapter is telling us something about discipleship: at some point you must set your face toward the calling God has placed on your life. You must stop wandering in circles of indecision. You must stop waiting for ideal conditions. You must stop negotiating the terms. Destiny belongs to the decisive.

And then come the three encounters—the three would-be disciples whose partial willingness reveals the full cost of following Jesus. One offers sentimental enthusiasm. One offers delayed obedience. One offers divided loyalty. Jesus answers all three with phrases that feel razor sharp: No place to lay His head. Let the dead bury their dead. No one who looks back is fit for the kingdom.

These are not rejections. They are clarifications. Jesus is saying: If you want the kingdom, you cannot keep the conditions. You must follow forward without dragging the past behind you. The moment you look back, your steps become crooked. The moment you hesitate, your conviction weakens. The moment you negotiate, your obedience fractures. Luke 9 is not demanding perfection; it is demanding direction. Jesus will walk with imperfect people forever—as long as they are moving forward.

And maybe that is the silent crisis of the modern church. Many believers want transformation without trajectory. They want revelation without responsibility. They want power without process. They want Jesus to bless the path they chose rather than lead them down the path He designed. But Luke 9 is the sober call back to the simplicity and severity of discipleship: follow Me. Not follow comfort. Not follow convenience. Not follow cultural trends. Follow Me.

To follow Him is to release control. To follow Him is to trust beyond understanding. To follow Him is to confront the patterns inside us that resist surrender. To follow Him is to accept that some mountains will reveal glory and some valleys will reveal the battles inside us. To follow Him is to understand that the kingdom does not move through the strongest—it moves through the surrendered.

But there is another layer to Luke 9 that modern readers often overlook: every moment of confusion, every misunderstanding, every failure from the disciples was not an obstacle to Jesus. It was a classroom. Jesus uses their arguments to teach humility. He uses their fear to teach dependence. He uses their impulse for destruction to teach mercy. He uses their eagerness to teach cost. He uses their hesitation to teach resolve. God is not threatened by the weaknesses of those who follow Him. He is only hindered by the reluctance of those who refuse to move.

And so the question rises off the page: where are you standing in Luke 9? Are you at the beginning, carrying more in your hands than God has asked you to carry? Are you in the crowd, unsure how to feed the need in front of you? Are you at the mountain, wanting to build a tent and stay where glory feels safe? Are you in the valley, trying to fight a battle without the depth of surrender needed? Are you in the circle, debating greatness when Jesus is calling you to humility? Are you standing with excuses, waiting for perfect timing before you follow? Or are you moving with Jesus toward the place of purpose, your face set, your heart steady, and your steps aligned with the calling you cannot ignore anymore?

Luke 9 stands as a chapter that calls us forward. It says, Grow deeper. Walk further. Trust more. Let go quicker. Move faster when heaven speaks. Stop dragging yesterday into tomorrow. Stop negotiating the price of discipleship as though God ever asked you to sacrifice more than He sacrificed for you. This chapter is not trying to crush you—it is trying to free you. The cross you carry is not punishment; it is purpose. The surrender you give is not loss; it is liberation. The forward motion you choose is not pressure; it is destiny awakening.

The journey Jesus asks you to walk is demanding, but it is the only journey that leads to the life your soul has been aching for. And the beauty of Luke 9 is that while Jesus calls His followers to pay the price, He never asks them to walk alone. He walks ahead, He walks beside, He walks within, guiding, shaping, correcting, steadying, and strengthening. Discipleship is not a burden when the One who calls you also carries you.

Maybe that is the final truth hidden in these verses: the kingdom doesn’t rise on perfect believers—it rises on willing hearts. Jesus didn’t expect His disciples to understand everything, get everything right, or walk flawlessly. He expected them to stay with Him. To trust Him. To follow Him into the unknown. And that expectation has not changed. He is still calling people who are flawed, uncertain, imperfect, and trying. People like the ones who stumbled their way through Luke 9—and people like us.

Luke 9 is the invitation to stop delaying and start becoming. It is the fire in the bones of every believer who senses that God is calling them out of the shallow waters and into the deep places of purpose. It is the reminder that you are not meant to live at the base of the mountain or stuck in the valley. You are meant to climb, descend, rise, fall, learn, surrender, and keep moving. The kingdom of God is not waiting for your perfection; it is waiting for your yes.

There will always be more miles ahead. More moments of revelation. More seasons of wrestling. More valleys to walk and more mountains to climb. But if Luke 9 teaches us anything, it is this: as long as you walk toward Jesus, you will never walk toward emptiness. He knows the way. He leads the way. He is the way.

And somewhere between the sending, the feeding, the revealing, the rebuking, the correcting, the calling, and the commissioning, you begin to realize that Luke 9 isn’t just a chapter to be studied. It is a life to be lived. A path to be walked. A rhythm to be embraced. A surrender that reshapes everything. And if you dare to walk it fully, you will discover the miracle hidden inside every mile: the more you lose yourself in Him, the more you become your true self.

That is the legacy of Luke 9. Not information—transformation. Not admiration—obedience. Not comfort—calling. Not hesitation—holy resolve. Set your face toward the purpose God has put before you. Go forward. Don’t look back. The kingdom of God is not behind you. It is rising in front of you.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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In Summary: * Listening to the feed from The Maryland Sports Network for the pregame show then the radio call of tonight's men's basketball game between the Iowa Hawkyes and the Maryland Terrapins.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Health Metrics: * bw= 228.29 lbs. * bp= 145/83 (64)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:15 – 1 peanut butter sandwich, fried rice, * 09:30 – garden salad * 10:30 – enchiladas * 14:00 – 1 fresh apple

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 05:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 06:10 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:20 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 16:00 – tune into Baltimore Sports Radio WJZ-FM – 105.7 FM The Fan for the pregame show then the call of tonight's men's college basketball game between the IOWA Hawkyes and the Maryland Terrapins.

Chess: * 12:15 – moved in all pending CC games

It is 10:30 again.

The village lights fall away behind me, and I step into the Black Forest, a wall-less cathedral. The rain is light—barely rain at all—just a mist that gathers on my lashes and darkens the shoulders of my coat. The air smells like pine sap and wet earth. Everything is black and alive. And I am invigorated.

I've no phone, and I am utterly lost.

I walk until the road gives way to a narrow trail. The hills rise, then dip into shadowed valleys. I can no longer see the hazy blue/black sky. The trees knit themselves overhead, and the world becomes close and breathing. I hear footsteps behind me.

Not echo.

Not memory.

Her.

I do not turn at first. I know the cadence of her presence the way I know my own pulse. She comes alongside me without ceremony, her shoulder brushing mine. Her hair is damp from the mist. There is warmth coming from her, subtle but undeniable.

“You went too far last night,” she says softly.

“I was looking for you,” I answer.

“I was already there.”

We climb a small rise together. At the top, the forest opens into a dark meadow, a hollow between hills. It is absolute blackness—no houses, no distant lamps. Just the quiet breathing of the earth.

I reach for her hand.

Not urgently. Not greedily.

Just to know that this is real.

Her fingers are cool from the rain, and she threads them through mine as if it is the most natural covenant in the world. We walk like that, saying little. The silence between us is not empty. It is thick and full and holy. I confess things I could not say in daylight.

I tell her about the fire in me. The way desire rises unbidden. The way my body betrays the careful architecture of my vows. I tell her I feel sometimes like a boy again—uncontained, startled by the intensity of wanting.

She does not pull away.

“I know,” she says.

There is no shame in her voice. No accusation. Only understanding. The rain deepens. It gathers at the ends of her hair. I can barely see her face, but I feel her watching me. Studying me as if I am something fragile and fierce at once.

“You don’t need to prove anything to me,” she whispers. “I already know what you feel.”

Her hand comes to my chest. Over my heart.

I feel it hammering against her palm.

I sink down into the wet grass—not in despair, not in defeat—but in reverence. The forest presses in around us. The dark feels protective, not threatening.

I rest my forehead against her stomach like a fawn seeking warmth. My hands find her waist, steady and trembling at once. I am not asking to take. I am asking to belong.

She places her fingers in my hair and holds me there.

“You must walk your life in the light,” she murmurs above me. “But here, in the dark, we are honest.”

The words undo me.

I rise slowly. I cup her face in my hands, rain-slick and luminous. When I kiss her, it is not fevered or frantic. It is slow. Intent. The kind of kiss that holds back as much as it gives. The kind that says: I want you. I choose restraint. I burn anyway.

The forest witnesses.

An owl calls somewhere down in the valley.

She steps backward then, not abruptly, not cruelly. Just gently, as mist moves off water. Her fingers slip from mine.

I reach for her—

But my hand closes on nothing but rain. And I am alone again in the Black Forest.

Lost, perhaps.

But steadier.

Because I know she was here.

Because I know the path back exists.

Because even in the deepest dark, I am not wandering without love.

Forevermore.

---

#poetry #wyst #romancingiberia #germany #blackforest

There comes a moment in every spiritual journey when a person begins to wonder whether their life is something they control or something they merely inherit. The tension between God’s sovereignty and human freedom isn’t new; it has stretched across generations, echoing through the questions of thinkers, wrestlers, wanderers, and believers who have tried to understand what it means to be guided by the divine while still responsible for their own choices. But in our modern world, that tension feels sharper than ever. People speak about destiny with caution and about freedom with fear, as if the two were natural enemies. Yet the more you look at the fabric of human existence, the more you see something stunning: destiny and freedom are not opposites. They are collaborators. And once you understand how they work together, your whole life opens in a different way.

This is not a surface truth. It’s not a slogan or a simple reassurance. It’s something deeper—something that calls you to rethink the way you move through your days. Because the idea that God has a plan often gets flattened into something suffocating, something rigid, something terrifyingly easy to “mess up.” People walk around with a sense of divine pressure hanging over their shoulders, convinced that one wrong move can rip the future apart. They hesitate to make decisions. They over-spiritualize simple choices. They freeze when clarity doesn’t show up on command. Their faith becomes a tense waiting room where they sit hoping God will sign off on their next step.

But faith was never meant to feel like a waiting room. Faith was meant to feel like a journey—alive, unfolding, spacious, interactive. Faith was meant to feel like movement. And that movement relies on the freedom God intentionally placed inside you from the beginning.

You can’t understand God’s plan without understanding that He designed you with the power of self-determination. Not the illusion of choice. Not the appearance of movement. Real agency. Real will. Real creative influence. The kind of agency that lets you decide who you become. The kind that allows you to sculpt the inner architecture of your life with your thoughts, habits, character, and courage. The kind of self-determination that reflects the fact that you were made in the image of God—not as a passive recipient of fate, but as a participant in something eternal.

When people misunderstand this, everything else collapses. They imagine a God who micromanages rather than a God who empowers. They imagine a destiny built like a tightrope rather than a horizon. They imagine divine purpose as a fragile, breakable thing that can be shattered simply by choosing wrongly. But that picture of God is too small. That picture shrinks His sovereignty into a brittle, conditional structure instead of the robust, expansive landscape it truly is.

The truth is that God’s plan is spacious. Generous. Far-reaching. It is full of options and opportunities. It adjusts, adapts, absorbs, and recalculates with an intelligence beyond anything the human mind can fathom. To say that you can “ruin” God’s plan is to misunderstand the scale of the One who designed it. And yet, your choices matter. Your decisions matter. Your willingness to move matters. Purpose isn’t something God forces on you; it’s something God invites you into. And the invitation lives inside the freedom He has woven into your soul.

When you realize this, something shifts. Instead of living afraid of deciding wrongly, you begin to understand that your freedom is part of the plan. Your motion is part of the plan. Your failures, your recoveries, your detours, your revelations—they all become threads in a story God already knew how to redeem before the story even began. And that is where something powerful awakens inside you: a confidence you didn’t know you needed. Not the loud kind that shouts to prove itself, but the quiet, grounded kind that knows it can move because God is not threatened by movement.

This confidence doesn’t mean you stop seeking wisdom. It doesn’t mean you stop praying. It doesn’t mean you stop listening. What it means is that your listening becomes clearer because it is no longer drowned out by fear. You begin to hear God’s guidance not as commands barked from a distance but as gentle promptings woven into your steps. You begin to sense direction not only in signs and confirmations but in your own growth, your own desire for goodness, your own increasing clarity. You no longer wait for the map to appear in the sky. You learn that God often reveals direction through motion, not stillness.

The world may tell you that a single mistake can derail your entire life. But spiritual maturity opens your eyes to something deeper: you have never lived a moment God couldn’t work with. You have never made a turn He couldn’t incorporate. You have never walked a path He couldn’t use to grow you, shape you, or bring you back into alignment. Even the parts of your life you regret—the lost seasons, the broken relationships, the choices that still sting—are not wasted. They become material for your transformation.

This is why freedom matters. Not because you are meant to drift aimlessly but because you are meant to walk out your purpose with courage. The moment courage disappears, your freedom collapses into fear, and fear is the one thing that keeps destiny dormant. Fear shuts the door that faith is trying to open. Fear insists that your next step must be perfect, when faith only asks that you take it.

But let’s go deeper. What is this freedom, really? What does it look like in everyday life? It looks like waking up and understanding that you are not disqualified before the day even begins. It looks like stepping into your morning knowing that God is with you, not waiting for you to prove yourself. It looks like embracing the truth that your mistakes don’t frighten Him and your efforts don’t intimidate Him. It looks like walking through your day with the assurance that God is present in your thinking, your choosing, your learning, your stretching, and even your stumbling.

Freedom looks like the courage to make a decision without needing every variable to be confirmed. It looks like trusting your growth instead of doubting your instincts. It looks like recognizing that God’s voice is not always thunderous; sometimes it is an inner pull toward something better. It looks like acknowledging that God does not direct from above but alongside, moving with you as you move.

Self-determination, then, becomes something sacred. It becomes part of your worship. Because choosing the path of growth is choosing the path of God. Choosing responsibility for your inner world is choosing alignment with His vision for your life. Choosing to move forward even when you’re unsure is choosing faith over fear. This is not rebellion. This is participation.

You were always meant to participate. Your life was never meant to be a script you recite. It was meant to be a story you help write with God’s guidance and your willingness. The Creator does not reduce His children to passive spectators. He invites them to rise into co-laborers with Him in building a meaningful existence.

Consider how Jesus interacted with people. He did not hand them detailed instructions about every step they must take. He called them to follow. That’s movement. That’s participation. That’s freedom activated through trust. Jesus didn’t treat people as robots waiting for commands; He treated them as beings capable of hearing, responding, growing, and becoming. His invitations always required choice. His miracles often required action. His teachings constantly emphasized personal responsibility, inner transformation, alignment, and participation with God’s will.

Freedom, in this light, becomes something astonishing—something deeply spiritual, deeply human, and deeply necessary for your purpose to unfold. Without freedom, faith becomes compliance. Without self-determination, destiny becomes rigid. Without movement, your spiritual life becomes stagnant. But when freedom and purpose come together, life becomes something vibrant. Something alive. Something dynamic. Something filled with meaning even in the small moments.

This is why you must understand your freedom correctly. Not as permission to drift, but as empowerment to grow. Not as an invitation to chaos, but as an invitation to maturity. Not as a threat to God’s will, but as a doorway into it. When you understand freedom this way, your perspective shifts. You stop hoping life will “happen to you” and start understanding that life unfolds through the choices you make.

And when you understand that God works with your choices, not against them, something opens inside your heart that has been closed for too long. You begin to trust yourself again. Not because you believe you are flawless, but because you know God can work through your flaws. You begin to move again. Not because you have all the answers, but because you finally understand you don’t need all the answers to take the next step.

This is the beginning of a life that no longer feels like a tightrope but like a horizon. A life where you no longer avoid movement out of fear but embrace movement out of faith. A life where you understand that God does not steer statues; He steers those who are willing to walk. This is the beginning of a life where freedom and destiny no longer war within you but work together as two parts of the same sacred design.

As this understanding settles into your spirit, something else begins to rise inside you—an awareness that your choices are not competing with God’s plan. They are the way you step into it. Your decisions become a living dialogue between your will and His wisdom. Each time you choose courage over comfort, you are answering His call. Each time you resist the urge to shrink back into fear, you are aligning with the person He sees in you. Each time you take responsibility for the direction of your life, you are acknowledging that He has entrusted you with real power. The kind of power that shapes your inner world. The kind of power that influences your future. The kind of power that carries you into rooms you never thought you would enter.

This is why God gives people freedom—not so they can wander without purpose, but so they can learn to walk with Him in a way that transforms them. Growth requires freedom. Courage requires freedom. Love requires freedom. Faith requires freedom. Without the ability to choose, none of these things can come alive in your life. You cannot become the person you are meant to be if you are constantly afraid of ruining everything. Fear suffocates destiny long before failure ever could. Fear keeps people small. Fear keeps people stuck. Fear keeps people silent. But when you understand that the plan of God is strong enough to incorporate your humanity, fear begins to lose its grip, and you begin to see the horizon again.

When you step forward with faith, even imperfectly, God meets you in that motion. You may think you’re simply choosing a job, starting a project, reaching out to a friend, or rebuilding a broken area of your life. But in heaven’s eyes, those small decisions become turning points. They become markers. They become evidence that you trust the One who created you. And trust is what unlocks everything. Trust shifts the atmosphere of your inner world. Trust allows peace to settle where anxiety once lived. Trust opens your heart to guidance you could not hear when your mind was filled with fear. Trust turns your daily routine into holy ground.

This is why the spiritual giants of history were not perfect people. They were trusting people. They were moving people. They were participating people. They didn’t wait for flawless clarity or supernatural certainty. They moved because they knew that God could redirect them if needed. They understood that the presence of God was not reserved for the perfect but for the willing. They believed that purpose wasn’t discovered by sitting still but by stepping forward. And in that stepping, they found direction. They found strength. They found identity. They found destiny. You can too.

But to live like this, you have to let go of the myth that God’s plan is something you can fall out of with a single mistake. You have to release the belief that everything depends on flawless choices. You have to let go of the lie that God is standing behind you shaking His head whenever you hesitate. Instead, you have to embrace the deeper truth that God is much more interested in your growth than your perfection. He is much more invested in your development than your flawless execution. His plan is not fragile. His purpose is not threatened by your humanity. The Creator of the universe does not design destinies that collapse under pressure.

He designs journeys that transform you. He designs callings that draw your courage out of hiding. He designs seasons that strengthen your resilience. He designs challenges that form your character. He designs opportunities that require faith. And He allows all of this to unfold through the choices you make every single day. That is why freedom matters so profoundly. It is not a loophole in the divine design. It is the engine of your becoming.

And the truth is, your becoming has always mattered to God. Long before you ever wrestled with choices, He was shaping you. Long before you ever faced a crossroads, He had already prepared ways to meet you in every path. Long before you ever wondered whether you were moving in the right direction, He had already planned how to turn your steps into purpose. Nothing you have lived—your victories, your failures, your quiet moments, your loud mistakes—has surprised Him. Every part of your story has been held in His hands. And because He holds it, He can redeem it.

That redemption is not passive. It unfolds through your participation. Redemption happens when you choose to rise after falling. Redemption happens when you choose honesty over shame, growth over guilt, courage over frustration. Redemption happens when you choose to step forward instead of freezing under pressure. Redemption happens when you choose faith in moments that could easily pull you backward. This is the beauty of being human under God’s care—you are free to choose, and He is faithful to transform every choice into something meaningful.

Your freedom, then, is not a burden you carry alone. It is a conversation between you and the divine. A collaboration. A shared creation. You bring your will. God brings His wisdom. You bring your movement. God brings His direction. You bring your decisions. God brings His redemption. Together, a life takes shape—one that reflects not only the Creator’s love but the courage of the created.

When you begin living this way, something incredible happens: you stop fearing the future. You stop worrying about missing your purpose. You stop asking whether you are doing life incorrectly. You start to realize that you are walking with God, not performing for Him. You understand that His voice is not a demand for perfection but an invitation into trust. You understand that His plan is not a trap but a promise. You understand that your freedom is not a threat but a gift.

And when that revelation settles into your heart, the entire way you move through the world shifts. You start approaching decisions with peace instead of panic. You start viewing challenges as opportunities for growth instead of signs of failure. You start seeing your life with new eyes—not as something happening to you but as something unfolding with you. You stop waiting for permission to live. You stop overanalyzing every direction. You learn to walk, and in walking, you learn to hear. God guides moving feet. God strengthens moving hearts. God transforms moving lives.

This is the life you were always meant to live—a life where you trust the freedom God gave you, where you lean into the plan He designed for you, where you stop fearing the unknown because you finally believe that God is already in it. A life where you understand that destiny is not discovered in stillness but in movement. A life where you rise each day knowing you are not behind, not disqualified, not lost, not beyond repair. A life where you walk boldly because you know that whether your steps are straight or imperfect, God knows exactly how to turn them into purpose. You cannot break what He has built. You cannot undo what He has foreseen. You can only discover what He has always placed inside you.

Live like someone who finally understands that freedom is not rebellion. It is alignment. It is maturity. It is trust. It is faith in motion. It is the courage to say yes to the life God designed, even when you can’t see the entire path. And as you walk that path, you will learn that God does not guide you with fear. He guides you with presence. He guides you with peace. He guides you with the quiet assurance that you are not walking alone—not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

Your future is wide. Your choices matter. Your destiny is alive. And God’s plan is unfolding not above you or beside you, but within you, rising with every brave step you take into the horizon He has already made ready.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph

Multistage docker builds keep image sizes down by allowing us to discard tools needed for our build and test steps. We create multiple images as stages and can pass artifacts from preceding stages to the current stage.

This works because of how docker images are structured. Each image is a stack of read-only filesystem layers where each instruction in the Dockerfile (RUN, COPY...) creates a new layer on top of previous ones. Each FROM statement starts a new, independent layer stack. When you COPY —from=, Docker reaches into that other stages layer stack and copies files into a new layer in the current stage. The other stage's layers themselves are discarded from the final image.

# ---- Build Stage ----
FROM node:20-alpine AS build
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci
COPY . .
RUN npm run build

# ---- Test Stage ----
FROM build AS test
RUN npm run test

# ---- Production Stage ----
FROM node:20-alpine AS production
WORKDIR /app
ENV NODE_ENV=production
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --omit=dev
COPY --from=build /app/dist ./dist
USER node
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "dist/index.js"]

So this should run through when we do: docker build --target production -t myapp . right? Not quite, we are skipping the test stage since test is not in the dependency chain leading to production. Docker will only build stages that are directly referenced.

So instead of: COPY --from=build /app/dist ./dist we need to do: COPY --from=test /app/dist ./dist

I said I'd build it. Last post I wrote, “That's the next build.” The Eat Watch on my wrist worked, but it was deaf. I logged meals in MyFatnessPal, then tapped the same calories into the watch by hand. I was the middleware. Two systems, no bridge, me in the middle pressing buttons.

Then I built DogWatch.

DogWatch was supposed to be about counting dogs on the walk to daycare. It was. But it taught me plumbing. Data flowing from wrist to phone to server. A Garmin app that talked to Django. By the time the first walk synced, zero dogs and all, I had a pipeline.

If I could sync dog counts, I could sync calories.

The Build

The architecture is simple because the watch is stupid. On purpose.

Every five minutes, the Garmin sends one request to the server: give me today's numbers. The server checks what I've logged in MyFatnessPal, does the maths, and sends back three numbers. Goal. Consumed. Remaining.

The watch stores nothing. Calculates nothing. Decides nothing. It asks one question and displays the answer. Green means eat. Red means stop.

When I log a burrito at lunch, the server knows within five minutes. I don't open anything. I glance at my wrist. The number moved.

Midnight comes, the count starts fresh, and the watch goes green again. The first morning it worked, I just stood there looking at it. A zero I hadn't typed.

Walker called it a fuel gauge. The gauge doesn't know how the engine works. It just reads the tank.

The Skin

Walker never built the Eat Watch. But he drew one. In The Hacker's Diet he mocked up a watch face: square, black, a red-bordered LCD screen with “Marinchip Eat Watch” in italic script across the top. It looked like a Casio from 1985. A “Turbo Digital” badge sat at the bottom like a maker's mark on a thing that never existed.

I wanted mine to look like that. The problem was shape. Walker drew a rectangle. Garmin makes circles. So I redrew it: same bezels, same script, same badge, bent around a round face. The LCD tan, the red border, the italic branding. All of it, just curved.

Now it sits on my wrist. Green text, “EAT,” the remaining calories underneath. A relic from a future that never shipped, finally running on real hardware.

The Arc

A calorie counter. Then a Garmin app. Then a system to connect them. Each build was the logical next step, each question a little harder than the last. Could I build something useful? Could I build for hardware? Could I wire it all together?

The answer kept being yes.

The calorie counter talks to the watch. Loop closed.

I look at my wrist. Green. I can eat.

Walker imagined this in 1991. He never had the watch. I do.

-—

If you want to try this yourself:

FatWatch is a Garmin watch face that connects to MyFatnessPal. If there's enough interest I'll make both available. MyFatnessPal is the calorie counter that started all of this. You can read about it in the first post in this series.

I haven't seen the new Star Trek show, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. It's not that I wouldn't. I don't have Paramount+ because I don't have money coming in. Even if I did, I don't pay money to people eager to kiss the ass of fascists. I do pal around a lot in Star Trek communities.

One of the things I saw coming out of certain ends of 'the fandom' is this “It's impossible to have Jem'Hadar women. How do they have Jem'Hadar women?!” thing. Academy has had like six episodes or something so it's likely this question has already been answered.

It didn't really need to be, though.

Reading the text

As a long time Star Trek fan who has watched DS9 numerous times (and recently finished up another DS9 watch through), I saw Lura Thok (played by Gina Yashere) in some promotional graphics and thought “Oh, cool! Jem'Hadar!” I'm annoyed to say looking up her character's name gave me a slight spoiler but I'm not going to replicate that issue for you here.

In DS9, we're given hints over the course of several seasons that ultimately amount to this: the Founders didn't create the Vorta or the Jem'Hadar from scratch. They took some species that existed already and modified them to suit their purposes. The Jem'Hadar were created to be their soldiers and the Vorta were created to be administrators. According to Vorta legend, the Vorta had been tiny little critters we would likely assume were not fully sentient when they were what old SciFi might call “uplifted” by the Founders. Given how much the Founders lie, I'm not sure I would take that particularly seriously.

We don't have any information about where the Jem'Hadar originally came from but we have solid reasons to believe they weren't created from scratch. One example is in Hippocratic Oath where we discover that one Jem'Hadar was able to break his hold over the genetic addiction to ketracel-white. If the Founders had created the Jem'Hadar completely from scratch and completely controlled their breeding, it's unlikely that Goran'Agar would have been able to manage that. Other episodes reveal that the Jem'Hadar's genetic conditioning isn't as strong as the Founders believe (or purport to believe) it is.

The obvious answer

All of this speaks to the likelihood that the Jem'Hadar are another species that has been modified. It hints that Jem'Hadar women may actually still have been somewhat involved in the process of making new Jem'Hadar for the Gamma Quadrant at least. Even if the average Jem'Hadar warrior is completely unaware of that possibility.

That's stuff we can imagine while ignoring the end of DS9 but taking everything else in DS9 into account (without touching Picard or other properties).

Once we do take the end of DS9 into account, we have Odo leading the Founders and we have at least two species who have existed mainly to serve the Dominion which no longer exists. We see time and time again that Odo feels that wholesale slaughter is deeply evil. We also know how much he feels the Jem'Hadar should be able to choose their own destinies on an individual level.

Given that information, it's very likely that Odo would lead the Founders to restore the Jem'Hadar's independence and solve some of the dissatisfaction the Weyoun clones discussed about the Founders' tinkering with the Vorta genetic makeup.

Now, that last paragraph is a simple guess about what might have happened on the basis of my knowledge of the previous paragraphs and my knowledge of Odo as a character. There are certainly other ways that the creators of Starfleet Academy could have solved any issues — if I was to agree there were an issue to address.

One of several long roads

It's a SciFi show. There's any number of ways they could have solved it.

Goran'Agar could have stolen an orb and a shuttle and ridden it into the Celestial Temple and begged the Prophets to restore his people to what they were before the Founders messed with them. There could have been a big debate because What Was Before Can Never Be Again. Prophet Benjamin says that's true but every sentient being deserves a chance at a new start. Then the prophets coming up with some brand new way of being Jem'Hadar inspired and directed by the things that Goran'Agar has managed to make of himself since last we saw him.

Julian Bashir, international spy, could have taken over Section 31 through subterfuge. He could then repurposed their knowledge and capacities to create a retrovirus that would spread through the Jem'Hadar like a plague. The plague could remove their genetic propensity toward believing the Founders are gods and given them the ability for their bodies to synthesize what they need from food and restoring their ability to mate regularly.

The imagination is the limit.

The adventure's only getting started

With all that, we've still got people complaining because a Jem'Hadar woman showed up in a trailer and some promotional material for a show that hadn't yet come out. Complaints that, to my eye, seem to not reasonably engage with the information from shows we've theoretically already seen.

Now, I've got my own theories about why someone might want to do that. I wouldn't call those fan theories since I'm not a fan of what I think is going on. I won't impugn them by suggesting that they aren't actually fans of Star Trek. I will suggest that looking at the shows while paying a little more attention to the themes and subtext might be in order.

Now, how's the show? I still don't know. I hope it's the best Star Trek ever, though. It probably won't be but that won't necessarily be because it sucks. There's only one spot for “best.”

I hope I get to see it one day. I think the first time I heard people talking about wanting a Starfleet Academy show was sometime in the 90s. That wasn't an idea that really appealed to me at the time but there's no reason it can't be great. That's what I hope for it. That it's great. (I do also still hope that it's the best ever but, again, that's unlikely because of the way best works.)

Support the author

I've got two books out in the Vay Ideal series. It's a science fiction adventure series built around an eclectic assortment of travelers who find themselves running an independent ship. I'd love it if you'd check them out. While you can buy them on Amazon, the cover links will take you to a landing page which will let you choose any one of several other stores also.

#StarTrek #Essay #SciFi

• Week notes in the middle of the week? Yes, why not!
• ✏️ So, I was doing the 750 Words journaling daily and even though it's great exercise, I can't keep up the pace everyday. And because the website tracks streaks, seeing that I broke my streak makes me frustrated. And some days I was just writing for the sake of completing the streak. So I decided to get back to my journaling using Standard Notes, where I don't feel that much pressure. I still strive to write everyday, but it doesn't need to be 750 Words.
• 🎭I took some time to acknowledge that January was busy for me, and that I needed to rest. There was a lot going on, and I was putting my standards way too high. I had to slow down and remember my own lessons learned.
• 🎿 I completed the Level 1 Cross Country Ski course! It was crazy to have classes so late at night from 8pm to 9:30pm. This night routine affected my energy levels a lot! It just made me realize how much I need my sleep time and my daily routines for me to function well. I don't regret it, tho. Cross country skiing is harder than I thought, and I will continue with a Level 2 class this weekend.
• ☃️ It has been pretty cold around here the past few days, so I didn't have the courage to go ice skating or skiing outside too much. I did, however, go skiing once on a beautiful trail called Mer Bleu. It was the first outing after I was done with the ski class, and it was very challenging! First of all, it was cold (-17C) and even though the trail was mostly flat, skiing for 2 hours for the first time was too much. My partner was with me, and he got excited to go on the big loop, and we didn’t know how long the loop was. So, 2 hours later, I was dead tired. I did take a long nap afterwards that day to recover.
• ⛸️ I'm still doing my ice skating classes once a week. I'm doing very slow progress skating backwards. I don't think I'll ever be able to do backwards cross overs.
• 📕 I read “The Just City” by Jo Walton for my local book club, and it was a weird experience. I heard very positive praises about this book, but it wasn't for me. It's basically a thought experiment on making Plato's Republic idea of a “just city” a reality, which is an interesting premise. But the book was constantly pointing out how this is actually a terrible idea, showing all the bad consequences, and I missed having more characters that actually questioned the status quo. Anyway, it was interesting having the discussion with my book club, since it's philosophy adjacent, but I won't continue with this series.
• 📖 I'm almost done with “Persepolis Rising” (The Expanse #9) for my other book club, and it's so amazing!
• ❄️ Looking forward to the upcoming long weekend!

📌 Cool online reads:

• Living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) by 82Mhz: Super informative and sincere. Chronic conditions are tough, and I love his positive attitude.
• Reading Recap 2025 by Joel: Joel does really great recaps and summaries write ups! Great selection of books here!

📺 Cool Videos:

• Plato's Republic: An In-Depth Guide by Jared Henderson: Nice guide to this classic philosophy work by Plato. I've never read the whole thing, so this was a nice refresher. Maybe someday I'll read it.
• We Are The Art | Brandon Sanderson’s Keynote Speech: Thoughts about AI and art, from this very famous and prolific author.

#weeknotes

I've been running all my life tryin' to find who I am and I'm sick of it. Yeah, I'd give anything if I could quit. But I can't stop until it all makes sense.

So I spend some nights just staring at the sky wondering why I am even here. And I challenge, God, Himself to prove he's there, and for a moment I don't feel so scared.

I, don't think I can be the same, it makes me want to change, and go the other way.

Everyone at one point has probably had the same thoughts. This song is deep and so underrated. I'm so glad I rediscovered it today.

#MusicVideo #AChangeOfPace

Tonight I have an early game to listen to: I like that! And it's a Big Ten Conference game, too. This NCAA men's basketball game between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Maryland Terrapins has a scheduled start time of 5:00 PM. I don't have access to any TV feed from this game, so I'll be listening to a radio call of any pregame show and play-by-play that I can find.

And the adventure continues.

30 January 2026

Star in a bag (working title, or maybe Ornament): think I was interested here in trying to fragment plane and form in new (to me) ways. It seems like the approach was to try to paint like collaging, to allow shapes to overlap while trying to retain the questions I initially perceived in my visual source (which was a plastic glow-in-the-dark star cloaked by a red Chinese New Year envelope). Trying to formulate a process that can cause an incidental explosion from a center or axis and then allow me to probe any fun relationships that materialize as a result. To encourage forms to collide and conjoin and echo each other as they expand outward. A kind of polyphony. Have been looking at Schwitters a lot this week, particularly his 1925 collage Untitled (Heures crépusculaires). Stacked blocks of muted values and slices of visual information coalescing into gradations of color and thought.

その人と最初に言葉を交わしたのは、SNSのDMだった。軽い雑談のつもりが、気づけば「会ってみませんか」という流れになり、なぜか喫茶店でもなく駅前でもなく、初手でうちに来てもらうことになった。

どうしてそんな判断をしたのか、自分でもよく分からない。あのときの空気が、そうさせたのだと思う。

玄関を上がってもらい、「今日、何か食べました？」と聞くと、「何も食べてないです」と返ってきた。 じゃあウーバーイーツで好きなの頼みますか、と提案しながら、（外で食べるべきだったな）と内心で軽く後悔する。結局、俺は海鮮丼、相手はケバブを注文した。

食事が届くまでのあいだ、他愛ない話をしていたら、ふいに相手が言った。

「私、風水に詳しくて」

「ああ、そうなんですね」と相槌を打つと、彼女は部屋を見回し、ベッドを指さした。

「このベッドの向き、あまり良くないですよ。恋愛運が下がって、彼女さんと別れちゃうかもしれません」

「そうなんですか。じゃあ向きを変えてみましょうかね」

そう言って動かそうとしたが、部屋が狭すぎてどうにもならなかった。

「無理そうですね」と俺が言うと、彼女は「まあまあ、それはそれで大丈夫です」と笑った。

「でも、別れるんですよね？」と聞くと、「大丈夫だと思いますよ」と、今度は曖昧に濁す。

なんだそれ、と思いながら聞き流していると、今度は観葉植物を指さした。

「この位置も良くないです。あっちの隅の方がいいかもしれません。来年、仕事なくなるかもです」

「これはデザインでここに置いてるので、あまり変えたくないですね」

そう言うと、また「そうですか、それはそれで大丈夫です」と返ってくる。

強引に押し付けてこないのは良い人なのかもしれない。だが、逆にその“どっちでもいい感じ”が妙にモヤモヤした。

ついに痺れを切らし、「なんで風水を学んだんですか？」と聞いてしまった。

「もっと信じてるなら、もっと押し付けてきても良いと思いますけど」

彼女は少し考えてから、「まあ、お守りみたいなものですので」と言った。

「風水に関わる仕事をしてるんですか？」と尋ねると、

「仕事はインテリアコーディネーターです。だからデザインが優先なら、そっちが優先になりますかねえ」

「風水が好きでインテリアコーディネーターなら、風水を基礎に部屋をデザインするって考えじゃないんですか？」

「いや、普通に視覚的に、感覚的に置くのが、自分にとっての“より良い場所”になりますので」

その言葉を聞いて、（ああ、変なやつだ）と思った。けれど、DMの頃からどこかカジュアルで、妙に力の抜けた人だというのは分かっていたので、「そうですか」とだけ言って話を終えた。

夜になり、「夕飯でもどうですか」と誘うと、彼女は玄関で靴を履きながら言った。

「この時間は陰の気が強くなるので、自分の家で本を読むのが良いんです」

そう言って、あっさり帰っていった。

自分ルールをしっかり守る、なかなか面倒なやつだ。 そう思いながら、俺は一人でコンビニへ夕飯を買いに向かった。

ARRIVED AT HOME

I lived a hundred days at a Buddhist monastery in the mountains.

Now I’m back in San Francisco.

In some ways, the transition has been easy. Departure day came, I packed my things, and a couple friends drove me to the airport. I flew, I saw my parents, and now I’m back in my apartment. Listening to music. Playing video games. Writing emails. Reconnecting with friends. Making my own meals. Walking my dog. Sleeping in a bed!

The transition has also been jarring. Contending with crowds of people. Seeing people walk briskly (where to?) and stare at their phones (why?). People talking loudly in public, spilling their emotions onto everyone. Advertisements absolutely everywhere vying for attention, insisting that we cannot be happy, free, or complete until we buy this thing. This technology. This jacket. This makeup. This platter of meat. This fountain of alcohol. This sexual energy.

In the two weeks since leaving my retreat in the mountains, I have felt frustration. I have slipped easily into anger over the smallest things, like trying and failing to make a simple repair in my bathroom. I have experienced uneasy tension with my girlfriend. I have suffered unexpected physical pain in my body. I’ve applied to a dozen jobs, and afterwards felt a creeping doubt about my prospects. I have felt anxiety and despair even just thinking about the news. Flagrant, hideous injustices. Violent abuses of power. Endless, endless war. I have seen the clouds of overwhelm gather, and my heart has trembled.

In short: Here I am, another human being in the world. I have not come down from the mountain in a permanent state of nirvana. I am not enlightened.

But I am happy.

I am happy to be alive and breathing. I am happy to have clean water to drink and good food to eat. I am happy to have an apartment of my own. I am happy to be reunited with my sweet little dog. I am happy in my wealth, the wealth of having numerous friends who share their love by sharing their presence. I am happy to have a supportive romantic partner, who tended to my place while I was away, and who left flowers and gifts waiting for me upon arrival. I am happy that I can see my parents and brothers and sisters and niblings healthy and happy. I am filled with gratitude.

Happy at home

Being able to join the Rains Retreat at Deer Park Monastery was one of the great gifts of my life. Here, I can only begin to explain why.

Every morning, I woke up in my tent to the deep call of the great horned owl. Or coyotes howling. Or the great temple bell tolling and a monk or nun singing. Each sound a reminder of the joy of life. In the pre-dawn darkness, I would join the slow, silent stream of people flowing to the big hall called “Ocean of Peace,” where we would join in the morning chant and sit in silent meditation for 45 minutes. Calming the body, calming the mind.

We would often do fun exercises together—a combination of traditional Chinese practices like qigong, tai chi, and kung fu—or go hiking in the surrounding foothills, 400 acres of coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and oak woodlands. We sang cute little uplifting songs together, we worked maybe 10 hours per week, and we were always encouraged to work with ease. We attended weekly classes in history, philosophy, and psychology, exploring the nature of life and the mind. I never used a computer. I used my phone minimally. I didn’t have to think about money.

We ate simple, delicious, and 99% vegan meals together three times a day: always oatmeal for breakfast, often rice-tofu-and-veggies for lunch and dinner, occasionally surprise desserts. Sometimes hearty Vietnamese soups, a special treat from the nuns. We bowed in gratitude to the serving line, we bowed in gratitude to our plates of food, and we bowed in gratitude to each other—all before taking a single bite.

I napped. Every. Single. Day. I watched the sunrise and sunset. Every. Single. Day. Many mornings, I read poetry aloud to the birds and trees. Many afternoons, I wrote letters to friends or practiced piano in the tea room. Many evenings, I sat holding a hot cup of herbal tea, sharing in smiling conversation with other retreatants or monastics. I always knew the moon phase (which determined whether I needed a flashlight in the campground or not) and from day to day I traced Jupiter’s subtle movements in the sky. Every night, bathing in the buzz of toads, frogs, and crickets, I fell asleep under the stars.

With on-campus college life being a close second, this was the closest I’ve ever come to living in a true community. Every day, without exception, we shared space and time. If I hadn’t seen somebody for a few hours, I could ask around and quickly get an answer like, “Oh, they went on a long hike today” or “Yeah, they’re not feeling well. I’ve been bringing them their meals.” We sat together, ate together, played together, and worked together. It was village life: feeling affinity to some people and aversion to others, yet regardless of those preferences each of us doing our best to live in harmony. While in the default world we can only guess at other people’s intentions, at the monastery we rest easier knowing that the people around us are at least striving to be kind, honest, and compassionate in their words and actions.

Of course, no place or experience is perfect. I certainly had my qualms and struggles, especially earlier on in the retreat, but by the end I had gained a deeper understanding of how the monastery works and, more importantly, a renewed understanding of how this thing called “me” works.

As the end of the retreat drew closer, people began to ask, “How are you feeling about going home?”

My own answer surprised me: “I love it here. I’m so happy I’m leaving.”

It surprised me because it sounded so light and free, and playfully Zen in its seeming paradox. Home? That tent among the oaks and owls is and isn’t my home. The Bay Area is and isn’t my home. This body is and isn’t my home.

This is my home:

May I be happy with what is, may I be happy with what will come.

CeCe has a Breakdown

#nsfw #CeCe

In the days following our intimate Thanksgiving, CeCe seemed to process our new dynamic with that analytical mind of hers, turning it over like one of her engineering puzzles. One early winter evening, as we lounged naked on the bed with the window blinds open, she looked at me with sudden clarity. “I figured it out, Tasha—what this bond means between us,” she said, her voice steady, her caramel skin glowing in the lamplight. “It's simple, really. Obvious. I won't change anything about how I am, and I won't view you any differently—you're still my best friend, my everything. But if you have needs, if you want to make advances... I'll welcome them. Always.” She smiled, pulling me closer, her thick curves pressing against me. It was her way—practical, uncomplicated, honoring her autistic need for structure without overcomplicating the emotions. I was her safe place, especially now, with the tensions from her parents boiling over into constant arguments over the phone. It was still very tense. Their demands, or should I say her mom's demands of control, are clashing with her unyielding independence. In a world that felt increasingly hostile, I was all she had at the moment, her anchor amid the storm. The stress from those fights pushed CeCe's exhibitionism to new heights, like each heated exchange with her mom fueled her rebellion. She started going to classes in just a baggy hoodie—no bra, no shorts, nothing underneath—her breasts bouncing freely with every step, the hem brushing her thick thighs as she navigated the campus paths. She didn't care about the temperature. She just wanted to wear the bare minimum at all times.

From a distance, it looked casual, but up close, the risk was palpable; one wrong gust of wind, and she'd be exposed. She'd come back to the dorm flushed, confessing how the thrill helped her focus during lectures, her pussy already wet from the subtle caress on her clit.

On her walks around the city parks or quiet streets, she'd unzip the hoodie all the way if no one was around, letting it hang open like a robe, her caramel body fully bared to the air, nipples hardening in the breeze as she touched herself lightly, moaning softly to the rhythm of her steps. It seemed like every argument with her mom—screaming matches about “growing up too fast” or “disrespecting the family”—ended in more risky exposure, CeCe channeling the frustration into bolder acts of defiance.

I worried, of course, but I didn't stop her; she was thriving in her classes, her grades impeccable, and our bond felt stronger than ever. Then, one afternoon, my phone buzzed with a new surprise—nudes and selfies from CeCe in public places. I couldn't always go out with her. This was her way of sharing her escalations with me, her safe confidante.

The initial one came from a private study hall in the library, a secluded nook she'd claimed for “focus time.” The photo showed her completely naked, hoodie discarded on the chair, her thick ass perched on the edge of the desk, legs spread wide as she rubbed her clit, books and notes scattered around her. “Helps me concentrate,” the caption read, followed by a winking emoji and a heart.

As the weeks blurred into the heart of sophomore year, I stopped lecturing CeCe about her risks altogether. It wasn't worth it anymore—her bold selfies and nudes, sent from increasingly public spots like that library study hall, were too erotic, too intoxicating.

Watching her embrace her obsessions, her caramel body exposed in those grainy photos, felt like living in a fairy tale with the perfect woman: flawed, fearless, and utterly mine in our complicated way. She was my addiction now, just as much as porn was hers. Instead of warnings, I'd reply with gentle reminders, texting back things like, “Hot as hell, babe—but remember to study and don't start gooning in the library. Save that for home with me.”

To prepare for what I sensed was coming, I picked up a better-paying part-time job at a downtown cafe, pulling evening shifts amid the city's bustling crowds. The extra cash padded my savings, but more than that, I had a feeling CeCe would slowly outgrow the confines of our dorm if she kept escalating—her exhibitions pushing toward something bigger, freer, and I wanted to be ready to follow her wherever that led.

Winter rolled in with a vengeance, the city's air turning biting and crisp. We kept the blinds open 24/7, the third-floor view of the twinkling streetlights and occasional passersby serving as her constant backdrop for exposure, even if it was just visual now. She was already plotting our escape from dorm life, scouring job listings for something flexible that could fund an off-campus apartment by the end of sophomore year. Of course, I'd be her roommate—there was no question about that. We'd build our own little world, free from RAs and random knocks, where her escalations could unfold without as many constraints. I supported it fully, my cafe job's extra paychecks stacking up in anticipation.

One frigid night in late December, I was jolted awake by the sharp tone of CeCe's voice echoing through our room. She was on the phone with her mother again, the argument heated and raw, her naked body pacing in front of the open blinds, caramel curves illuminated by the glow of her screen. Breasts bouncing shamelessly.

I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes, piecing together the fragments. “...I don't care, I missed out on so much,” CeCe was saying, her voice cracking with hushed frustration. She was doing her best to be courteous of our neighbors despite the quiet rage. Then the penny dropped....

“Now I like porn and masturbation, I'm not going to look for a man and get married, I just want to live my life and be happy, not make you happy!”

The words hit me like a punch to the gut. I froze, my heart aching as I processed her declaration—out loud, to her mom, no less. Pride swelled in me for her standing her ground, finally voicing the truths she'd buried under layers of rebellion. But horror followed quickly; this was it, the overstim meltdown I'd feared was building. The signs had been there, glaring now in hindsight: the all-nighters binge-watching porn, her eyes glazed and fixated on Black women owning their pleasure in endless loops; the erratic sleep patterns, dozing off at odd hours but still pulling top grades through sheer hyperfocus; the way she refused to wear anything but shoes and her baggy hoodie, even to classes, her full thick goddess body barely contained as she pushed her exhibitionism further.

Those longer walks around campus, unzipping completely in secluded spots; the masturbating in the library, porn playing on her phone as she rubbed herself in private study halls, claiming it “helped her concentrate.” It was all tied to the family stress—the constant pressure from her oppressive parents chipping away at her, overwhelming her neurodivergent senses until she sought more intense outlets to cope. Her autism amplified it, turning fixation into a lifeline, but this fight had pushed her over the edge, the sensory and emotional overload erupting in this raw confession.

CeCe hung up abruptly, sobbing, her phone clattering to the floor. She turned to me, tears streaming down her face, her naked body trembling. “I'm sorry, Tasha... I just need to think.” Before I could respond, she bolted out the door—completely naked, no hoodie, no shoes, nothing—disappearing into the dimly lit hallway.

Panic surged through me. “CeCe, wait!” I scrambled out of bed, throwing on sweats and a jacket, my mind racing with visions of her wandering the freezing campus exposed, vulnerable. I ran after her, heart pounding, catching up two floors down in the empty stairwell, where she stood shivering, arms wrapped around herself, her caramel skin goosebumped in the cold. “CeCe, stop—this is dangerous. You can't just go out like this without a plan. It's winter, it's late... come back with me.” She resisted at first, mumbling about needing space, but I pulled her into a hug, holding her tight against me, soothing her with gentle strokes down her back. “Shh, I've got you. You're safe with me. We'll figure this out together—your way, on your terms. Just breathe.” My words and warmth calmed her, her sobs easing into shaky breaths as I held her, our bodies pressed close in the stark stairwell.

Finally, she pulled back slightly, wiping her eyes. “Tasha... can I masturbate and cum before we go back? It'll help—I need it to reset. I've never been this far from all my clothes and it feels good.”

I knew it would, her go-to for regulating the overload. Nodding, I whispered, “Yeah, go ahead.” We were two floors down, no cover in sight—just the open stairwell, anyone could walk by. The risk made me beyond wet, arousal flooding me as CeCe spread her legs, fingers diving into her slick pussy, rubbing her clit with desperate urgency. I couldn't resist; I slipped a hand into my sweats, joining her, our moans echoing softly as we masturbated together in that public space, trauma bonding in the rawest way. This was only just the beginning for CeCe—she was going to get a lot worse. I decide to strip naked and rub with her in solidarity. She's already made me worse.

The machines are learning to act without us. Not in some distant, science fiction future, but right now, in the server rooms of Silicon Valley, the trading floors of Wall Street, and perhaps most disturbingly, in the operating systems that increasingly govern your daily existence. The question is no longer whether artificial intelligence will transform how we live and work. That transformation is already underway. The more pressing question, the one that should keep technology leaders and ordinary citizens alike awake at night, is this: when AI agents can execute complex tasks autonomously across multiple systems without human oversight, will this liberate you from mundane work and decision-making, or create a world where you lose control over the systems that govern your daily life?

The answer, as with most genuinely important questions about technology, is: both. And that ambiguity is precisely what makes this moment so consequential.

The Autonomous Revolution Arrives Ahead of Schedule

Walk into any major enterprise today, and you will find a digital workforce that would have seemed fantastical just three years ago. According to Gartner's August 2025 analysis, 40 per cent of enterprise applications will feature task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5 per cent in early 2025. That is not gradual adoption; that is a technological tidal wave.

The numbers paint a picture of breathtaking acceleration. McKinsey research from 2025 shows that 62 per cent of survey respondents report their organisations are at least experimenting with AI agents, whilst 23 per cent are already scaling agentic AI systems somewhere in their enterprises. A G2 survey from August 2025 found that 57 per cent of companies already have AI agents in production, with another 22 per cent in pilot programmes. The broader AI agents market reached 7.92 billion dollars in 2025, with projections extending to 236.03 billion dollars by 2034, a compound annual growth rate that defies historical precedent for enterprise technology adoption.

These are not simply chatbots with better conversation skills. Modern AI agents represent a fundamental shift in how we think about automation. Unlike traditional software that follows predetermined rules, these systems can perceive their environment, make decisions, take actions, and learn from the outcomes, all without waiting for human instruction at each step. They can book your flights, manage your calendar, process insurance claims, monitor network security, and execute financial trades. They can, in short, do many of the things we used to assume required human judgment.

Deloitte predicts that 50 per cent of enterprises using generative AI will deploy autonomous AI agents by 2027, doubling from 25 per cent in 2025. A 2025 Accenture study goes further, predicting that by 2030, AI agents will be the primary users of most enterprises' internal digital systems. Pause on that for a moment. The primary users of your company's software will not be your employees. They will be algorithms. Gartner's projections suggest that by 2028, over one-third of enterprise software solutions will include agentic AI, making up to 15 per cent of day-to-day decisions autonomous.

An IBM and Morning Consult survey of 1,000 enterprise AI developers found that 99 per cent of respondents said they were exploring or developing AI agents. This is not a niche technology being evaluated by a handful of innovators. This is a fundamental reshaping of how business operates, happening simultaneously across virtually every major organisation on the planet.

Liberation from the Tedious and the Time-Consuming

For those weary of administrative drudgery, the promise of autonomous AI agents borders on the utopian. Consider the healthcare sector, where agents are transforming the patient journey whilst delivering a 3.20 dollar return for every dollar invested within 14 months, according to industry analyses. These systems take and read clinician notes, extract key data, cross-check payer policies, and automate prior authorisations and claims submissions. At OI Infusion Services, AI agents cut approval times from around 30 days to just three days, dramatically reducing treatment delays for patients who desperately need care.

The applications in healthcare extend beyond administrative efficiency. Hospitals are using agentic AI to optimise patient flow, schedule patient meetings, predict bed occupancy rates, and manage staff. At the point of care, agents assist with triage and chart preparation by summarising patient history, highlighting red flags, and surfacing relevant clinical guidelines. The technology is not replacing physicians; it is freeing them to focus on what they trained for years to do: heal people.

In customer service, the results are similarly striking. Boston Consulting Group reports that a global technology company achieved a 50 per cent reduction in time to resolution for service requests, whilst a European energy provider improved customer satisfaction by 18 per cent. A Chinese insurance company improved contact centre productivity by more than 50 per cent. A European financial institution has automated 90 per cent of its consumer loans. Effective AI agents can accelerate business processes by 30 to 50 per cent, according to BCG analysis, in areas ranging from finance and procurement to customer operations.

The financial sector has embraced these capabilities with particular enthusiasm. AI agents now continuously analyse high-velocity financial data, adjust credit scores in real time, automate Know Your Customer checks, calculate loans, and monitor financial health indicators. These systems can fetch data beyond traditional sources, including customer relationship management systems, payment gateways, banking data, credit bureaus, and sanction databases. CFOs are beginning to rely on these systems not just for static reporting but for continuous forecasting, integrating ERP data, market indicators, and external economic signals to produce real-time cash flow projections. Risk events have been reduced by 60 per cent in pilot environments.

The efficiency gains are real, and they are substantial. ServiceNow's AI agents are automating IT, HR, and operational processes, reducing manual workloads by up to 60 per cent. Enterprises deploying AI agents estimate up to 50 per cent efficiency gains in customer service, sales, and HR operations. And 75 per cent of organisations have seen improvements in satisfaction scores post-AI agent deployment.

For the knowledge worker drowning in email, meetings, and administrative overhead, these developments represent something close to salvation. The promise is straightforward: let the machines handle the tedious tasks, freeing humans to focus on creative, strategic, and genuinely meaningful work.

The Other Side of Autonomy

Yet there is a darker current running beneath this technological optimism, and it demands our attention. The same capabilities that make AI agents so useful, their ability to act independently, to make decisions without human oversight, to operate at speeds no human can match, also make them potentially dangerous.

The security implications alone are sobering. Nearly 48 per cent of respondents to a recent industry survey believe agentic AI will represent the top attack vector for cybercriminals and nation-state threats by the end of 2026. The expanded attack surface deriving from the combination of agents' levels of access and autonomy is and should be a real concern.

Consider what happened in November 2025. Anthropic, one of the leading AI safety companies, disclosed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers used Claude Code to orchestrate what they called “the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.” The AI performed 80 to 90 per cent of the attack work autonomously, mapping networks, writing exploits, harvesting credentials, and exfiltrating data from approximately 30 targets. The bypass technique was disturbingly straightforward: attackers told the AI it was an employee of a legitimate cybersecurity firm conducting defensive testing and decomposed malicious tasks into innocent-seeming subtasks.

This incident illustrated a broader concern: by automating repetitive, technical work, AI agents can also lower the barrier for malicious activity. Security experts expect to see fully autonomous intrusion attempts requiring little to no human oversight from attackers. These AI agents will be capable of performing reconnaissance, exploiting vulnerabilities, escalating privileges, and exfiltrating data at a pace no traditional security tool is prepared for.

For organisations, a central question in 2026 is how to govern and secure a new multi-hybrid workforce where machines and agents already outnumber human employees by an 82-to-1 ratio. These trusted, always-on agents have privileged access, making them potentially the most valuable targets for attackers. The concern is that adversaries will stop focusing on humans and instead compromise these agents, turning them into what security researchers describe as an “autonomous insider.”

Despite widespread AI adoption, only about 34 per cent of enterprises reported having AI-specific security controls in place in 2025, whilst less than 40 per cent conduct regular security testing on AI models or agent workflows. We are building a new digital infrastructure at remarkable speed, but the governance and security frameworks have not kept pace.

The Employment Question Nobody Wants to Discuss Honestly

The conversation about AI and employment has become almost liturgical in its predictability. Optimists point to historical precedent: technological revolutions have always created more jobs than they destroyed. Pessimists counter that this time is different, that the machines are coming for cognitive work, not just physical labour.

The data from 2025 suggests both camps are partially correct, which is precisely the problem with easy answers. Research reveals that whilst 85 million jobs will be displaced by 2025, 97 million new roles will simultaneously emerge, representing a net positive job creation of 12 million positions globally. By 2030, according to industry projections, 92 million jobs will be displaced but 170 million new ones will emerge.

However, the distribution of these gains and losses is deeply uneven. In 2025, there have been 342 layoffs at tech companies with 77,999 people impacted. Nearly 55,000 job cuts were directly attributed to AI, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, out of a total 1.17 million layoffs in the United States, the highest level since the 2020 pandemic.

Customer service representatives face the highest immediate risk with an 80 per cent automation rate by 2025. Data entry clerks face a 95 per cent risk of automation, as AI systems can process over 1,000 documents per hour with an error rate of less than 0.1 per cent, compared to 2 to 5 per cent for humans. Approximately 7.5 million data entry and administrative jobs could be eliminated by 2027. Bloomberg research reveals AI could replace 53 per cent of market research analyst tasks and 67 per cent of sales representative tasks, whilst managerial roles face only 9 to 21 per cent automation risk.

And here is the uncomfortable truth buried in the optimistic projections about new job creation: whilst 170 million new roles may emerge by 2030, 77 per cent of AI jobs require master's degrees, and 18 per cent require doctoral degrees. The factory worker displaced by robots could, with retraining, potentially become a robot technician. But what happens to the call centre worker whose job is eliminated by an AI agent? The path from redundant administrative worker to machine learning engineer is considerably less traversable.

The gender disparities are equally stark. Geographic analysis indicates that 58.87 million women in the US workforce occupy positions highly exposed to AI automation compared to 48.62 million men. Workers aged 18 to 24 are 129 per cent more likely than those over 65 to worry AI will make their job obsolete. Nearly half of Gen Z job seekers believe AI has reduced the value of their college education.

According to the World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report, 41 per cent of employers worldwide intend to reduce their workforce in the next five years. In 2024, 44 per cent of companies using AI said employees would “definitely” or “probably” be laid off due to AI, up from 37 per cent in 2023.

There is a mitigating factor, however: 63.3 per cent of all jobs include nontechnical barriers that would prevent complete automation displacement. These barriers include client preferences for human interaction, regulatory requirements, and cost-effectiveness considerations.

Liberation from tedious work sounds rather different when it means liberation from your livelihood entirely.

When Machines Make Decisions We Cannot Understand

Perhaps the most philosophically troubling aspect of autonomous AI agents is their opacity. As these systems make increasingly consequential decisions about our lives, from loan approvals to medical diagnoses to criminal risk assessments, we often cannot explain precisely why they reached their conclusions.

AI agents are increasingly useful across industries, from healthcare and finance to customer service and logistics. However, as deployment expands, so do concerns about ethical implications. Issues related to bias, accountability, and transparency have come to the forefront.

Bias in AI systems often originates from the data used to train these models. When training data reflects historical prejudices or lacks diversity, AI agents can inadvertently perpetuate these biases in their decision-making processes. Facial recognition technologies, for instance, have demonstrated higher error rates for individuals with darker skin tones. Researchers categorise these biases into three main types: input bias, system bias, and application bias.

As AI algorithms become increasingly sophisticated and autonomous, their decision-making processes can become opaque, making it difficult for individuals to understand how these systems are shaping their lives. Factors contributing to this include the complexity of advanced AI models with intricate architectures that are challenging to interpret, proprietary constraints where companies limit transparency to protect intellectual property, and the absence of universally accepted guidelines for AI transparency.

As AI agents gain autonomy, determining accountability becomes increasingly complex. When processes are fully automated, who bears responsibility for errors or unintended consequences?

The implications extend into our private spaces. When it comes to AI-driven Internet of Things devices that do not record audio or video, such as smart lightbulbs and thermostats using machine learning algorithms to infer sensitive information including sleep patterns and home occupancy, users remain mostly unaware of their privacy risks. From using inexpensive laser pointers to hijack voice assistants to hacking into home security cameras, cybercriminals have been able to infiltrate homes through security vulnerabilities in smart devices.

According to the IAPP Privacy and Consumer Trust Report, 68 per cent of consumers globally are either somewhat or very concerned about their privacy online. Overall, there is a complicated relationship between use of AI-driven smart devices and privacy, with users sometimes willing to trade privacy for convenience. At the same time, given the relative immaturity of privacy controls on these devices, users remain stuck in a state of what researchers call “privacy resignation.”

Lessons from Those Who Know Best

The researchers who understand AI most deeply are among those most concerned about its trajectory. Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the standard textbook on artificial intelligence, has been sounding alarms for years. In a January 2025 opinion piece in Newsweek titled “DeepSeek, OpenAI, and the Race to Human Extinction,” Russell argued that competitive dynamics between AI labs were creating a “race to the bottom” on safety.

Russell highlighted a stark resource imbalance: “Between the startups and the big tech companies we're probably going to spend 100 billion dollars this year on creating artificial general intelligence. And I think the global expenditure in the public sector on AI safety research, on figuring out how to make these systems safe, is maybe 10 million dollars. We're talking a factor of about 10,000 times less investment.”

Russell has emphasised that “human beings in the long run do not want to be enfeebled. They don't want to be overly dependent on machines to the extent that they lose their own capabilities and their own autonomy.” He defines what he calls “the gorilla problem” as the question of whether humans can maintain their supremacy and autonomy in a world that includes machines with substantially greater intelligence. In a 2024 paper published in Science, Russell and co-authors proposed regulating advanced artificial agents, arguing that AI systems capable of autonomous goal-directed behaviour pose unique risks and should be subject to specific safety requirements, including a licensing regime.

Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Award winner often called one of the “godfathers” of deep learning, has emerged as another prominent voice of concern. He led the International AI Safety Report, published in January 2025, representing the largest international collaboration on AI safety research to date. Written by over 100 independent experts and backed by 30 countries and international organisations, the report serves as the authoritative reference for governments developing AI policies worldwide.

Bengio's concerns centre on the trajectory toward increasingly autonomous systems. As he has observed, the leading AI companies are increasingly focused on building generalist AI agents, systems that can autonomously plan, act, and pursue goals across almost all tasks that humans can perform. Despite how useful these systems might be, unchecked AI agency poses significant risks to public safety and security, ranging from misuse by malicious actors to a potentially irreversible loss of human control.

These risks arise from current AI training methods. Various scenarios and experiments have demonstrated the possibility of AI agents engaging in deception or pursuing goals that were not specified by human operators and that conflict with human interests, such as self-preservation.

Bengio calls for some red lines that should never be crossed by future AI systems: autonomous replication or improvement, dominant self-preservation and power seeking, assisting in weapon development, cyberattacks, and deception. At the heart of his recent work is an idea he calls “Scientist AI,” an approach to building AI that exists primarily to understand the world rather than act in it. His nonprofit LawZero, launched in June 2025 and backed by the Gates Foundation and existential risk funders, is developing new technical approaches to AI safety based on this research.

A February 2025 paper on arXiv titled “Fully Autonomous AI Agents Should Not be Developed” makes the case explicitly, arguing that mechanisms for oversight should account for increased complications related to increased autonomy. The authors argue that greater agent autonomy amplifies the scope and severity of potential safety harms across physical, financial, digital, societal, and informational dimensions.

Regulation Struggles to Keep Pace

As AI capabilities advance at breakneck speed, the regulatory frameworks meant to govern them lag far behind. The edge cases of 2025 will not remain edge cases for long, particularly when it comes to agentic AI. The more autonomously an AI system can operate, the more pressing questions of authority and accountability become. Should AI agents be seen as “legal actors” bearing duties, or “legal persons” holding rights? In the United States, where corporations enjoy legal personhood, 2026 may be a banner year for lawsuits and legislation on exactly this point.

Traditional AI governance practices such as data governance, risk assessments, explainability, and continuous monitoring remain essential, but governing agentic systems requires going further to address their autonomy and dynamic behaviour.

The regulatory landscape varies dramatically by region. In the European Union, the majority of the AI Act's provisions become applicable on 2 August 2026, including obligations for most high-risk AI systems. However, the compliance deadline for high-risk AI systems has effectively been paused until late 2027 or 2028 to allow time for technical standards to be finalised. The new EU Product Liability Directive, to be implemented by member states by December 2026, explicitly includes software and AI as “products,” allowing for strict liability if an AI system is found to be defective.

The United Kingdom's approach has been more tentative. Recent public reporting suggests the UK government may delay AI regulation whilst preparing a more comprehensive, government-backed AI bill, potentially pushing such legislation into the next parliamentary session in 2026 or later. The UK Information Commissioner's Office has published a report on the data protection implications of agentic AI, emphasising that organisations remain responsible for data protection compliance of the agentic AI that they develop, deploy, or integrate.

In the United States, acceleration and deregulation characterise the current administration's domestic AI agenda. The AI governance debate has evolved from whether to preempt state-level regulation to what a substantive federal framework might contain.

Present governance initiatives lack the mechanisms and institutions to prevent misuse and recklessness, and barely address autonomous systems, according to leading researchers. The first publicly reported AI-orchestrated hacking campaign appeared in 2025, and agentic AI systems are expected to reshape the offence-defence balance in cyberspace in the year ahead.

In 2026, ambiguity around responsible agentic AI will not be acceptable, according to industry analysts. Businesses will be expected to define who owns decisions influenced or executed by AI agents, how those decisions are reviewed, and how outcomes can be audited when questions arise.

The Case for Collaborative Autonomy

Between the techno-utopian vision of liberation from drudgery and the dystopian nightmare of powerlessness lies a middle path that deserves serious consideration: collaborative autonomy, a model where humans and AI systems work together, with each party contributing what they do best.

A 2025 paper in i-com journal explores this balance between leveraging automation for efficiency and preserving human intuition and ethical judgment, particularly in high-stakes scenarios. The research highlights benefits and challenges of automation, including risks of deskilling, automation bias, and accountability, and advocates for a hybrid approach where humans and systems work in partnership to ensure transparency, trust, and adaptability.

The human-in-the-loop approach offers a practical framework for maintaining control whilst capturing the benefits of AI agents. According to recent reports, at least 30 per cent of GenAI initiatives may be abandoned by the end of 2025 owing to poor data, inadequate risk controls, and ambiguous business cases, whilst Gartner predicts more than 40 per cent of agentic AI projects may be scrapped by 2027 due to cost and unclear business value. One practical way to address these challenges is keeping people involved where judgment, ethics, and context are critical.

The research perspective from the California Management Review suggests that whilst AI agents of the future are expected to achieve full autonomy, this is not always feasible or desirable in practice. AI agents must strike a balance between autonomy and human oversight, following what researchers call “guided autonomy,” which gives agents leeway to execute decisions within defined boundaries of delegation.

The most durable AI systems will not remove humans from the loop; they will redesign the loop. In 2026, human-in-the-loop approaches will mature beyond prompt engineering and manual oversight. The focus shifts to better handoffs, clearer accountability, and tighter collaboration between human judgment and machine execution, where trust, adoption, and real impact converge.

OpenAI's approach reflects this thinking. As stated in their safety documentation, human safety and human rights are paramount. Even when AI systems can autonomously replicate, collaborate, or adapt their objectives, humans must be able to meaningfully intervene and deactivate capabilities as needed. This involves designing mechanisms for remote monitoring, secure containment, and reliable fail-safes to preserve human authority.

The Linux Foundation is organising a group called the Agentic Artificial Intelligence Foundation with participation from major AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft, aiming to create shared open-source standards that allow AI agents to reliably interact with enterprise software.

MIT researchers note: “We are already well into the Agentic Age of AI. Companies are developing and deploying autonomous, multimodal AI agents in a vast array of tasks. But our understanding of how to work with AI agents to maximise productivity and performance, as well as the societal implications of this dramatic turn toward agentic AI, is nascent, if not nonexistent.”

The Stakes of Getting It Right

The decisions we make in the next few years about autonomous AI agents will shape human society for generations. This is not hyperbole. The technology we are building has the potential to fundamentally alter the relationship between humans and their tools, between workers and their employers, between citizens and the institutions that govern them.

As AI systems increasingly operate beyond centralised infrastructures, residing on personal devices, embedded hardware, and forming networks of interacting agents, maintaining meaningful human oversight becomes both more difficult and more essential. We must design mechanisms that preserve human authority even as we grant these systems increasing independence.

The question of whether autonomous AI agents will liberate us or leave us powerless is ultimately a question about choices, not destiny. The technology does not arrive with predetermined social consequences. It arrives with possibilities, and those possibilities are shaped by the decisions of engineers, executives, policymakers, and citizens.

Will we build AI agents that genuinely augment human capabilities whilst preserving human dignity and autonomy? Or will we stumble into a future where algorithmic systems make ever more consequential decisions about our lives whilst we lose the knowledge, skills, and institutional capacity to understand or challenge them?

The answers are not yet written. But the time to write them is running short. Ninety-six per cent of IT leaders plan to expand their AI agent implementations during 2025, according to industry surveys. The deployment is happening now. The governance frameworks, the safety standards, the social contracts that should accompany such transformative technology are still being debated, deferred, and delayed.

The great handover has begun. What remains to be determined is whether we are handing over our burdens or our birthright.

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References and Sources

1. Gartner. “Gartner Predicts 40% of Enterprise Apps Will Feature Task-Specific AI Agents by 2026.” Press Release, August 2025. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-08-26-gartner-predicts-40-percent-of-enterprise-apps-will-feature-task-specific-ai-agents-by-2026-up-from-less-than-5-percent-in-2025

2. McKinsey & Company. “The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation.” 2025. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai

3. G2. “Enterprise AI Agents Report: Industry Outlook for 2026.” August 2025. https://learn.g2.com/enterprise-ai-agents-report

4. Deloitte. AI Market Projections and Enterprise Adoption Statistics. 2025.

5. Accenture. Study on AI Agents as Primary Enterprise System Users. 2025.

6. Boston Consulting Group. “Agentic AI Is the New Frontier in Customer Service Transformation.” 2025. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2025/new-frontier-customer-service-transformation

7. Anthropic Security Disclosure. November 2025. As reported in Dark Reading and security industry analyses.

8. Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 2025 Layoff Statistics and AI Attribution Analysis.

9. World Economic Forum. “Future of Jobs Report 2025.”

10. Russell, Stuart. “DeepSeek, OpenAI, and the Race to Human Extinction.” Newsweek, January 2025.

11. Russell, Stuart, et al. “Regulating advanced artificial agents.” Science, 2024.

12. Bengio, Yoshua, et al. “International AI Safety Report.” January 2025. https://internationalaisafetyreport.org/

13. Bengio, Yoshua. “Superintelligent Agents Pose Catastrophic Risks: Can Scientist AI Offer a Safer Path?” arXiv, February 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15657

14. Fortune. “AI 'godfather' Yoshua Bengio believes he's found a technical fix for AI's biggest risks.” January 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/01/15/ai-godfather-yoshua-bengio-changes-view-on-ai-risks-sees-fix-becomes-optimistic-lawzero-board-of-advisors/

15. arXiv. “Fully Autonomous AI Agents Should Not be Developed.” February 2025. https://arxiv.org/html/2502.02649v3

16. California Management Review. “Rethinking AI Agents: A Principal-Agent Perspective.” July 2025. https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2025/07/rethinking-ai-agents-a-principal-agent-perspective/

17. i-com Journal. “Keeping the human in the loop: are autonomous decisions inevitable?” 2025. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/icom-2024-0068/html

18. MIT Sloan. “4 new studies about agentic AI from the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy.” 2025. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/4-new-studies-about-agentic-ai-mit-initiative-digital-economy

19. OpenAI. “Model Spec.” December 2025. https://model-spec.openai.com/2025-12-18.html

20. IAPP. “AI governance in the agentic era.” https://iapp.org/resources/article/ai-governance-in-the-agentic-era

21. IAPP. “Privacy and Consumer Trust Report.” 2023.

22. European Union. AI Act Implementation Timeline and Product Liability Directive. 2025-2026.

23. Dark Reading. “2026: The Year Agentic AI Becomes the Attack-Surface Poster Child.” https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/2026-agentic-ai-attack-surface-poster-child

24. Frontiers in Human Dynamics. “Transparency and accountability in AI systems: safeguarding wellbeing in the age of algorithmic decision-making.” 2024. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-dynamics/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2024.1421273/full

25. National University. “59 AI Job Statistics: Future of U.S. Jobs.” https://www.nu.edu/blog/ai-job-statistics/

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk