I remember watching Aftersun in 2022 and there was this one quote that really resonated with me, In 2023 when I turned 30 I posted it on my stories;

The film follows 11-year-old Sophie and her 30-year-old father Calum as they spend a summer vacation at a Turkish resort in the 1990s. Calum is a loving and attentive father, but there are subtle signs that he is struggling with inner turmoil and mental health issues. Despite his efforts to give Sophie a fun and carefree holiday—swimming, dancing, and having heartfelt conversations—there are glimpses of his loneliness and emotional pain beneath the surface. Did I feel the same way as Calum back then? Yes. We probably weren't going through the same things but 2023 was my first year in the most intense period of grief in my life.

I think everyone secretly (or publicly) have a few things they want to achieve by 30. Common things include running a marathon, travelling solo, getting back to reading, moving countries etc. But nobody really makes a list of things they want to lose by 30 except probably the people who are trying to lose weight or battling cancer. So when you lose your brother by the time you turn 30, that doesn't fit neatly into any checklists. I think grief really alters the way you perceive time and the future. While others count the milestones they want to reach, you count the things that will never happen, the things that were never said and the music that won't be made.

My most upvoted post on reddit (when I was stupid enough to create an account with my own name) is from 6 years ago on r/askphilosophy, where I asked people about the Philosophy of Keiji Nishitani. I was getting tired of White Philosophers and their attachment to individualism. I needed something that talks about collectivism, interconnectedness and relational being. From then to now, I have tried reading some snippets of "Religion and Nothingness" and the idea of Mahayana Buddhist term Sunyata. It's fun to say "each thing is itself in not being itself, and is not itself in being itself" at a party, but what does it really mean?

I think half the reason why the "The Myth of Sisyphus" and Absurdism gained popularity was Camus's face. I've seen multiple articles calling him "terrifically good-looking". While that's a bit far-fetched, I do see the appeal. There's something sexy about this man telling you that "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" while smoking a cigarette, and not giving a damn about his tuberculosis. But does the revolt against the meaninglessness of life need to be done in solitude?

Sunyata is nothingness. But this isn't the nothingness in the West that's seen as negation - a void where something should be, an emptiness that needs filling. But it is instead an absolute nothingness. For anything to exist, there must be an absolute nothingness from which it arises and which it passes into, otherwise change would be impossible since everything would already exist and would remain as it is, It’s the ground of all being. Śūnyatā, isn’t about erasing existence but recognizing that everything exists through its relations to everything else. Nothing stands alone, not even you. And in that interdependence, there is a kind of fullness. The nothingness is not the end of meaning—it’s where meaning begins.

Nishitani quotes an old proverb, "Fire does not burn itself. Water does not wash itself. A sword cannot cut itself." In Western metaphysics, you might say: "Fire is that which burns." But if burning is its essence, why can’t fire burn itself? Fire’s essence can't be understood in isolation. Fire can only be fire through its relation to other things—it burns outside itself, not within. I'm not at all well-versed in Philosophy, but from the bits and pieces I've read this means that the core of our existence depends on what we are not. The people we love become part of us through their absence. Loss doesn’t leave us as neatly as Western philosophies of individualism suggests. You don’t simply "move on" or "find closure" or go through "five stages of grief" - because the person you lost isn’t an object you leave behind. Their non-being folds into your being. You carry them, not as a weight, but as a condition of your own existence.

And this interconnectedness extends beyond grief. If everything exists through its relationship to everything else, then fundamentally, no one is truly independent or self-contained. We should count on each other - not just for emotional support, but for survival, safety, and freedom. So freedom isn’t the absence of obligation; it’s recognizing that we are already intertwined. True liberation comes from embracing this mutual dependence, where our well-being is bound up with the well-being of others. If you are yourself because of what you are not, then your freedom depends on the freedom of those around you. There’s no escaping the relational web we all inhabit - and within that web lies the potential for collective care and collective liberation. There was never a separate "you" in the first place.

And maybe the point was never about pushing the boulder uphill- but about realizing that the hill itself is the problem. If the hill is the overarching systems of power (like Capitalism, Patriarchy, Heteronormativity etc.) and the State, the answer isn’t to endlessly labor under its weight. It’s to dismantle the hill altogether. Nothingness suggests that systems of power only exist through their relations - through what they are not. If the structures that oppress us depend on these relational boundaries, then freedom lies in breaking them down, not merely surviving within them.

I didn't expect this post to be this philosophical. Maybe Keiji Nishitani didn't mean any of these. But I now know for sure that an individual's experience of solitary confrontation with the absurd isn't how I want to look at the world and life anymore. And collective care isn't just an act of kindness, but a radical reorientation of how we understand 'being' itself. I've recently been blessed to have found a small group of people who are close to my heart. Queer friendships and relationships that make me feel important, loved and perceived is something I've been struggling to find and nurture, and I'm glad to have found a few. I have felt so much queer joy in the past few years, and it feels magical to be around people who let me be my authentic self. This is the best I've felt in my thirties. I hope my dear friends and I would get to shovel a hill or two in the years to come. And that we'll hold each other throughout the pushing of our own boulders.

I end this post with a poem a dear friend recited to me on my birthday, by Gayle Brandeis. It brought me solace, I hope it would for you too.

Love,
Nisal