The Wounds of Human Relationships and the Contemplation of Existence: The Confession of a Philosopher Who Does not Believe in Emotions
- Soyo

- Aug 19, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 6, 2025
Soyo's Existence Ethics (Existence itself is ethics)

Human relationships reveal their most profound truths when they stand on the brink of collapse. Yet, they also give rise to the most significant silences. Emotions are not to be trusted. I do not trust people's emotions—perhaps I decided long ago not to. Emotions flow; they are fleeting, changing direction without warning, sometimes concealing a cruel blade behind beautiful words. Emotions are neither persuasion nor healing. They follow the arc of a boomerang, denying themselves and returning once more. That is why I do not build philosophy on emotions. I believe in existence—not in emotions, but in the traces left behind at the end of existence, and the weight those traces carry.
Returning Home: Shattered Expectations
Many years had passed since I last set foot on the soil of my homeland. Instead of excitement, I was greeted first by fear, love, and heavy expectations. My childhood friends who once played with me in the hills behind my house, and even the insects and grass, remained vivid in my memory. Yet the reunion ended in disappointment. I was reminded once again that expectations are the first to crumble, and people are the quickest to become strangers.
Human Relationships Always Have the Structure of Collapse
I have been wounded by people my entire life—broken in spirit, losing countless nights because of others, and surviving only by clinging to reason. Human relationships are the source of all beginnings, but also of all destruction. A single word, a single gesture, or even a single silence can push someone to the edge. So once more, I turned to philosophy. I needed to dissect emotions, reason, and the very structure of humanity.
Life is imprisoned in a cell called “reason.” People cannot live without reason. Whether that reason is love, forgiveness, faith, anger, revenge, or wounds, people find their sense of existence through these reasons and spend their lives immersed in them. That is the swamp called life. I have seen too many lives sink into that swamp, unable to escape, burdened by the reasons they carry. So I ask: What reason do we have for continuing to exist?
Emotions Always Return to the Self
Emotions may seem to travel far away, but they always return to the self. Anger, compassion, attachment, and separation all come back as knots within us. This return is not a compromise—it is the very principle of existence that emotions follow a repetitive cycle of self-destruction and self-awareness. Emotions may begin as if they are external events, but they inevitably lead us to painful self-reflection. Nevertheless, human relationships are the essence of existence. Ironically, human relationships are embedded in our existence as a structure we cannot escape. Beyond time, age, and distance, humans connect, hurt, forgive, endure, and ultimately discover existence. Through these relationships, we come to know ourselves, reap the fruits of patience, learn the meaning of forgiveness, and attain the dignity of character. This is the true process of becoming.
Wounds Become Philosophy, and Life Becomes a Record
Emotions may seem to travel far away, but they always return to the self. Anger, compassion, attachment, and separation all come back as knots within us. This return is not a compromise—it is the very principle of existence that emotions follow a repetitive cycle of self-destruction and self-awareness. Emotions may begin as if they are external events, but they inevitably lead us to painful self-reflection. Nevertheless, human relationships are the essence of existence. Ironically, human relationships are embedded in our existence as a structure we cannot escape. Beyond time, age, and distance, humans connect, hurt, forgive, endure, and ultimately discover existence. Through these relationships, we come to know ourselves, reap the fruits of patience, learn the meaning of forgiveness, and attain the dignity of character. This is the true process of becoming.
Pain passes, but wounds remain as scars. Whether large or small, these scars hold the truth of a person's life, and that truth becomes philosophy.
Life is philosophy. That philosophy is not a book but a scene of a living soul, a record of humanity. I do not believe in emotions. However, I believe in the traces of existence. Those traces are philosophy, reasoning, and ultimately the meaning of a lifetime. And this is why, through “Existence Ethics,” I write about humanity, reflect on love, and firmly engrave dignity in wounds.
When human existence realizes the truth of itself, it encounters unbearable suffering before true humanity. That is the beginning of philosophy.
“When you try to hold on to existence with emotions, relationships are destroyed. But when you endure existence with patience, relationships become ethics.”
Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo's Existence Ethics, Author of 'The Silence of Existence' and 'The Flame of Truth.'
2025 Soyo's Philosophy. All rights reserved.
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