The Gaze & The Girl – The Empathic Social Observer

THE MULTIPLICITY OF BEING

I was having a conversation with a friend when he flinched at the word submission. Not at the idea itself, exactly, but at the possibility that I might believe it. Or not.

He paused, then laughed awkwardly and said he wasn’t sure whether I was a feminist or not.

Take cover! The taboo word has been mentioned.

So I asked him, calmly, whether he thought it was possible for a woman to be a feminist and still value submission in marriage.

He thought for a moment, then said yes.

Then added, “When it comes to you.”

Hold on.

Before you toss your phone on the bed and kiss your teeth at another article you assume will spiral into a tired argument about feminism or submission, let me be clear: this is not that essay.

I’m not here to litigate or exalt feminism.
I’m not here to rehabilitate or condemn submission.

I have my beliefs about both, and perhaps in a future article I’ll share them. But that is not the work of this piece.

What stayed with me from that conversation was not his answer, though, but the reason behind it. He didn’t arrive at yes because the idea suddenly made sense. He arrived at yes because he had come to accept the complexity of my thinking and how that complexity disrupted his mental filing system.

I didn’t always fit neatly into the boxes he had prepared.

And that discomfort – that brief mental tightening – is what I want to talk about.
Because beneath many of our loud cultural arguments is a quieter, more revealing question – one most of us deny asking ourselves, or each other:

Is a person ever just one thing?

We live in an age that rewards speed – fast opinions, fast alignment, fast categorisation. We want to know what someone is so we can decide how to treat them, how much to listen, and whether they are “safe” to engage. Labels sell because they are shortcuts to understanding the human. They save us time. They save us effort. They save us from the exhausting work of holding complexity.
But they also flatten people.

They silence people. I have been a perpetrator, and a victim of this existential laziness, sometimes even to self, unable to sit with inner chaos.

Amidst the laziness lies my almost obsessive curiosity, which has sometimes become detrimental. Another article.

Nevertheless, my own thinking is deeply shaped by my faith – not as a weapon, not as a demand, but as a lens. I don’t force it down anyone’s throat, but I also don’t pretend it doesn’t shape how I reason. And within that faith is an idea I return to often: that God is not singular in expression. Father. Son. Spirit. One being. God the protector; God the raging fire; God the lover; God the judge. I Am. Multiple manifestations, same God.

If humanity is said to be made in that image, why are we so disturbed by multiplicity in each other?

Why do we tense up when a person refuses to be ideologically tidy?
Somewhere along the way, we started mistaking coherence for purity – believing that to be credible, a person must be consistent in the narrowest sense. No contradictions. No tensions. No apparent opposites. But real humans are not essays written to prove a point. We are lived, layered, unfinished.

Walt Whitman once wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.” Chimamanda’s warning about the danger of a single story wasn’t just about misrepresentation – it was about intellectual laziness.

Because categorising people quickly allows us to move on to more self-absorbed pursuits. Once I’ve decided what you are, I no longer have to stay curious. I no longer have to sit with the discomfort of not knowing. I can dismiss, applaud, or argue with a version of you that fits neatly into my worldview.

And maybe that’s the real problem.
Not that people hold opposing ideas – but that we’ve grown impatient with the effort it takes to understand a whole person. Little wonder, then, that people are unsettled by curiosity. It feels invasive, almost indecent – as though they’ve forgotten that the Creator’s greatest masterpiece is the human being: physical, physiological, psychological, even spiritual. To explore oneself – and another – is a lifelong undertaking, one worth waking up for every morning.

So, I keep returning to that moment in the conversation. Not to correct my friend. Not to defend myself. Not to revel in some sense of superiority or acknowledgement, but to sit with the unease beneath it.

Why did my being “an exception” feel safer than questioning the box itself?

And how many people do we misunderstand, not because they are unclear, but because we demand clarity too cheaply, too quickly?

Meestique

The Empathic Social Observer.

Dear Mr. Robert Greene,

[Final piece of The Economics of Softness series]

A letter from someone who feels deeply, yet wants to master the game.

There’s something about your books – The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War – that made me pause. Not because I didn’t understand them, but because I did.

Perhaps too well.

They opened my eyes to a new way of seeing people: first through suspicion, then fascination. And now, I find myself somewhere between curiosity and pity. Not pity born of condescension, but of why.

You write like an observer behind a one-way mirror – cool, deliberate, unflinching.

But I wonder if that’s the full story. To understand manipulation, seduction, and psychological leverage so intimately, one must have felt them deeply. Painfully, even.

No one writes with that kind of precision without scars.

I am a soft person, Mr. Robert. Not weak – just someone who sees too clearly and feels too much. The kind of person people underestimate, then later label “intimidating” when I speak with softness and structure.

Your books taught me that power often wears a polite smile. That vulnerability can be used as a mirror – or a weapon. That perception frequently wins over truth.
And yet, this is where I struggle.

How do I protect my heart without burying it?

How do I learn the game of influence without turning cold?

How do I sharpen my instincts without dulling my empathy?

I know now that being “good” isn’t enough. But must I become cunning to be safe? Must I ration softness to be respected? Must I observe in silence when what I long for is connection?

You write as though power is a necessity – and perhaps it is. But I wonder about the cost. About your cost. What did you have to bury to see the world so clearly? Did your heart ever resist your mind?

If I could ask you one thing, it would be this:
Can someone like me – empathic, intuitive, assertive but emotional – ever master power without losing themselves?

I don’t want to become hardened. I just want to be safe in a world that punishes softness. I want to lead, love, and influence with presence, not pretense.

Maybe what I’m searching for is a different kind of power – one rooted in clarity and compassion. One that doesn’t pretend emotion is weakness. One that doesn’t require a mask to be effective.
If you’ve found it, even in glimpses – write back.

With sharp admiration and a soft heart,

Meestique

The Empathic Social Observer

WHAT SHAME DOES TO LEVERAGE

[Second post of my End-of-year, now turned New-Year series]

We hardly ever talk about the economic side of softness, or love. And by “we,” I mean women. Especially now, when “love” is being peddled like thrift – the unholy transaction of love for money.

We are shamed for demanding any form of exchange, and for some of us who are constantly fluid in our becoming, even the thought of it makes us cringe.

Shame.

Where does it spring from? Does it even spring?

I believe it calls, whispers, yells, and slaps us atop our heads, because shame isn’t a garment merely thrust upon a person. It is an insidious companion that sneaks in and never leaves. It comes to reside like a shadow, sitting quietly in the corner. That brutal, stern judge that reprimands.

Yep. That’s shame.

“I am ashamed that I’ve given so much without returns.”
“I am ashamed that I can not just walk away.”

These statements may resonate instantly with my audience, because if you read my blog, you must be someone who values presence, kindness, generosity – all the qualities that make love worthwhile.

But what about the shame?

I wish to acknowledge it.

Where does the external shame lie?

In unreciprocated giving, which feels like failure.
It hints at indiscipline, scatteredness, a lack of agency over oneself. And the worst blow of all: low self-esteem.

Then there is the internal shame – the one that gnaws at the limbs like neuropathy: the weakness of not walking away. One that contradicts self-preservation – the absurdity of it all.

That we stayed after understanding the cost.

Not out of morality, but out of attachment. Out of hope. Out of a delayed willingness to withdraw. This is the shame that feels personal, because it implicates agency: a gap between how capable we know ourselves to be, and the execution of it. A gap closed by willpower.

My mother would always say, “We are not business-minded in this family.” And I choose to think of our proclivities in those terms.

Economics and business have long given language to what we often glaze over, what we decide to ignore. They tell us that when supply increases and demand does not, value falls.
When input continues past its optimal point, returns diminish – then turn negative.
In any negotiation, the party with the strongest alternative to walking away holds the most power.

My dear softies, the ability to leave is not cruelty. It is leverage.

Even as I think on paper, I deduce that shame isn’t always a bad thing, something to be resisted. In this context, it is not moral or personal failure – an affront on one’s self-esteem – but feedback from a mispriced exchange. A reminder that softness, like any resource, requires structure to retain its value. Leaving is not the opposite of love. It is sometimes the condition that makes love possible without forgetting oneself.

Meestique,

– The Empathic Social Observer.

SCENT

By Meestique

🎀💞THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO LIVING IN MY SOFT, FEMININE ERA

“I’ve spent years studying everything except surrender.”
But I think this is what true softness means—to trust that God’s timing, not effort, births ease.

If you’re anything like me—someone who excelled in school and thought that achievement translated to success and wisdom in every area of life—then you must have realised by now how deceptive that mindset can be.

We were praised for working hard, for figuring things out, for mastering whatever we studied. But nobody warned us that this same mindset could become a kind of quiet self-destruction—the belief that we can fix, earn, or achieve our way into love, ease, or emotional safety. That if we study something long enough, we’ll eventually “crack the code.”
That may be true. But how worn down will you be by the time you finally crack it?

I realised quite early that I didn’t know much about men. I didn’t have a brother, and my dad was this towering, unknowable figure. So, to me, men carried a kind of mystique. I was fascinated by them in a way that bordered on obsession.
But fascination doesn’t guarantee understanding. Despite my effort, I failed at almost every romantic relationship I entered. Maybe because I was always drawn to the most complex, emotionally unavailable ones—the hardest puzzles to decode. My curiosity set me up for heartbreak.

The more I tried to “learn,” the harder I failed. It became a vicious cycle: no reward for my effort, only exhaustion. There were resentments here and there, but in typical Chinwe fashion, I kept hoping. Kept believing that one day I’d finally figure it out. The experts have a name for this condition, by the way — the anxious attachment style. Go figure.

Add that to my I-can-do-it attitude, and I became a chronic heartbroken-er. It’s been brutal. My self-esteem has dissolved and been rebuilt more times than I can count.
And yet, it was only today—while kneeling on the floor of my bedroom, crying and worshipping—that I realised something simple and profound: I could have invested all that energy into seeking God’s face about these “mystique” creatures of His.

That moment came with a wave of surrender. For once, I stopped trying to fix or decode, and I let go. I told my Heavenly Father, “Teach me. Give me ease where I’ve only known struggle.”

This realisation about my little knowledge of men has also opened my eyes to a far more humbling truth: I don’t know a lot about a lot of things. And maybe I was never meant to. The best way to navigate this life isn’t by gathering endless knowledge, but by submitting to the counsel of the Holy Spirit.
Ask me how He will guide me now, and honestly—I don’t even know. The only thing I know is that He dwells in me, and He will guide me in the way He knows I’ll understand for every situation.
And that, right there, is my conviction.

For as long as I can remember, relationships have been hard. I’ve blamed myself, convinced myself I was the problem. But then I asked, “Surely, it can’t be only me who’s defective?”
Imperfection is a human condition—so why should I be the only one suffering for mine while others, equally imperfect, find their people?
Maybe the unfairness was never in my lot, but in my perception.

I’ve seen God answer so many of my prayers. He’s broken barriers for me before. So maybe this time, instead of praying for “the one,” I should pray for understanding, patience, and grace. Because if there’s anything I’ve learned this year, it’s that His grace truly is abundant—just as Scripture says.

🩷💖From the Writer’s Journal:

This piece began as a lament but ended as a confession. I used to think strength meant doing, knowing, striving. But I’m slowly learning that it also means surrendering—to love, to uncertainty, to God.
Maybe the soft era is not about being delicate at all, but about being still enough to be guided.

Meestique,

The Empathic Social Observer😊

CONTAINED by Meestique

TO THE ONE WHO THOUGHT THEY’D BE A WRITER BY NOW

Dear You,

You thought it would’ve happened by now.

You thought you’d have a book—maybe not a bestseller, but something with your name printed on it. Something real. A spine. A dedication page. Maybe a small cult following on Goodreads.

You thought the words you wrote in your journal, in the margins of dental notes, in scraps of WhatsApp chats, would amount to something more solid by now. Something established.
But here you are.
Living in the parentheses.
Surrounded by half-done projects, open tabs, and stories you don’t feel brave enough to finish.

It’s okay.
I’m not here to push you.
I’m just here to sit with you in the “not yet.”

Because me too.
Everything in my life feels half-baked, like batter waiting on heat.
An e-book unopened.
A blog with five drafts and no posts.
A dream deferred because real life needs dinner and deadlines and someone to reply to that email with “Kind regards.”

But I still believe in you.
Not because of what you’ve published—but because of how you see.
Because you notice the quiet things. The ache behind a sentence. The way some people speak in ellipses and others in punctuation marks.
Because you feel everything like it’s your job.
And maybe it is.

Writing is a long, strange becoming.
It rarely feels like success.
It mostly feels like returning. Sitting with yourself. Listening. Starting again.

So no—maybe you’re not “a writer” in the polished, podcast-interview, book-tour way.
But you’re writing.
Even when you feel like a ghost in your own pages.
Even when you think no one sees you.

I do.

And I’m rooting for you.
Not the polished, perfect version.
You. Half-baked. Becoming. Trying again.

With softness,
Meestique.
The Empathic Social Observer.

“I’ve spent years studying everything except surrender.”But I think this is what true softness means—to trust that God’s timing, not effort, births ease.

“I’ve spent years studying everything except surrender.”
But I think this is what true softness means—to trust that God’s timing, not effort, births ease.