El Filósofo

Think Deeply, Feel Fully

Filosofical Fragments

  • You Could Miss It

    Everybody wants to live a good life. This is the first principle of practical reasoning: the good should be desired, and evil should be avoided. That one should believe any differently is, in my view, out of the question. If someone asks why this is so, the conversation is best avoided for the simple reason…

  • Here’s Hoping

    To mark the beginning of our Advent season, the first candle you’ll see lit is representative of hope, which, if I’m being honest, is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. Of course, the hope we celebrate at this time of year is that of God’s promises made in the Old Testament and fulfilled in…

  • The Venerable Exercise of Watching Children’s Movies

    “When was the last time you felt a moment of unadulterated child-like joy?” When my therapist asked me this question, it was difficult for me to come up with an answer. I looked back on the last few years and realised that I’d had far fewer of these moments than I’d have liked. Not that…

  • Out of Control

    “Love is easy to feel, difficult to hold, and astoundingly painful to hand over to someone else.” I spoke those words to a friend not too long ago, and (not to be prideful) I thought they were quite beautiful so I wrote them down. I’ve spoken at length about love on this blog over the…

  • Human After All

    I hate flying. Not the flying itself, but the logistics of it: flying means going through airports, waits at security if not at the gate itself, having to take your electronics out or your shoes off, and host of other little inconveniences that just suck the energy out of you. Finally, by the time you’re…

  • A Good Enough Venture Into What it Means to be Good

    I am not a good person. Or at least, I’m not always sure that I am: what is a good person, after all? In a sense, this question demands that I consider some of the qualities that I feel may be lacking in myself, and it has no easy answer. How can I make any…

  • I Wonder (It’s Frightening)

    One of my favourite bands, if not my favourite, will forever be Abba. Sue me. I sometimes refer to it as my guilty pleasure, but in all honesty I don’t feel any guilt about it. The themes they explore in some of their songs, although they sound so pleasant to the ear, often touch on…

  • A Catholic and a Muslim Walk into a Bar

    I’ve never been to a Mosque before. Today was the first time. I didn’t quite know what to expect: Christians and Muslims, after all, have historically not gotten along, and even today, with the religion-fueled violence that regrettably pervades much of the Middle East, one could say there is some tension in the air between…

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    Christ the Eternal Tao

    When I picked this book up, I was expecting a comparative study of Taoism and Christianity. I expected long (but interesting) chapters that fleshed out whatever similarities and differences exist between the two. Instead, what I found was poetry, wisdom, and the beautiful marriage of two traditions, each of which interpret and express the other.…

  • Living in La La Land

    I cried at the end of La La Land. Sue me. How could you not in that final scene? But for those of you who haven’t seen it, allow me to explain. La La Land is, of course, a love story. An aspiring actress and a struggling jazz pianist meet by fate, so it seems,…