Let us begin with nothingness. Nothingness is not a scene of darkness but a hollow ring in consciousness. When we stand in the world, reason easily concludes that the world has no meaning, yet feeling refuses to surrender, otherwise why do we bother living. In this standoff the heart naturally generates a need to verify that “I am truly here.” Such a verification is like dipping a hand into water to see if ripples answer. When the ripples appear, the subjective sense of being is gently held by the objective world.
Hence, as we grow older and intellectually richer, we start to enjoy the simplest things. From feeling the steam massaging our face while preparing our favorite dishes, feeling the sunshine bath and the rail's rust spots while wandering along the Hudson River, to feeling the scatters of papers being sucked one by one into a vacuum cleaner, we sense our agency, connect to our surroundings, and verify our existence. These are palpable sensations that produce biological changes, not weightless thoughts that leave the world untouched. They are one-way verifications to ourselves.
But human relationships are different. What we give in them is not merely a note of endorsement we write for ourselves. It is a two-way verification. I devote time and care to you not only to prove my capacity to love, but to ask your world to sign my existence. When you are moved, when your emotions and actions tilt even slightly, my weight appears in you. That influence can be felt; it is warm; it is the seed of a “we.” At this point the certification of existence grows flesh and blood; it no longer lingers as an idea but becomes sensual, something the body can remember: the way eyes linger, the jump of a message, the small things done together—each a moment of seeing me in you.
This verification is more fully completed by a partner than by a friend. A friend can understand my thoughts and share my moods, yet a partner’s presence is more complete. It involves the weaving of daily rhythms, the exposure of (even our most primitive) desire and vulnerability, the long labor of commitment, and the shared shaping of time and space. This all-dimensional entering into each other makes my being in you carry more weight. It's like two rivers slowly merging, their water blending invisibly, inseparably. What lies beyond language begins to circulate, habits shape each other, wishes extend each other, and existence shifts from the singular to the plural, from a point to a plane.
Within this structure, a partner’s initiative carries a particular weight. Initiative marks the instant when intention sets foot in reality, and turns love from a passive response into the act of placing energy into a shared space. We set a time to meet, we suggest beginnings, we write our plans onto each other’s calendars, and action lays a bridge between us. When initiative appears, love no longer floats or spins in one’s heart; it lands in the field of “us,” like carrying the first chair into a room being renovated. With that one lift there is a place, with that one set-down there is a life. The certification of existence thickens, as we are not singing alone to the void, we are playing together in a shared room.
When we talk about initiative we have to talk about giving, and it must be said that giving is not a marketplace exchange. If giving is tallied as payment, it loses its soul on the ledger. The movements of love are never to purchase tokens that rationally value the same. Giving is like lighting a lamp; it lights the road between us. If the other also lights a lamp the road is brighter, but even a single lamp has meaning, for in that moment I confirm I still choose to be light.
A gift is where my inner life steps into the world and takes on weight. Time offered. Attention paid. A hand extended. All these tangibles and intangibles help me feel my being: agency condenses into gesture, intention becomes a trace in the world. I act because in acting I become myself; you respond because on this road you also wish to become yourself. And when your lamp meets mine, the proof doubles: my act confirms I exist in relation, your response confirms a small luminous “we.” In the work of making each other real, we both receive the truth of who we are.
Thus the chain of logic closes in the register of being. Nothingness awakens the need to verify existence, verification seeks contact, contact thickens into a felt life. This can happen in study and in craft, in friendship and in solitude, yet romance remains a singular field where verification becomes fully embodied. A partner shares mornings and logistics, language and silence, error and repair, and in the small initiatives that move a day forward we feel that our presence does not vanish into air. We are not scattering words into emptiness, we are laying a table, hanging a coat, returning to the same street after rain, and the world answers by holding our footprints a little longer.
If there is one line to close with, let it be this. Existence is verified by attention and by action, and love is one of the clearest forms that attention can take. When a partner meets us with their own initiative, when we meet them with ours, the certification of being becomes audible as a shared pulse, yet the pulse also continues when we stand alone and touch the world with steady hands. In both cases we answer the hollow ring with presence, and the echo that returns is simple and sufficient, I am here, we are here.