Unlike many, I never quite understood the concept of “under my skin”, until I felt it in a visceral experience. It has been one of those counterfactual lessons, where my intuitions and emotions are forcing themselves upon my reasoning. I wonder if this unfamiliar reaction contains some hidden intuitive wisdom, or it’s just a blind encounter.

As time goes by, I’m increasingly getting convinced that there is an intuitive wisdom somewhere in there. Of course there is. It’s a brand of wisdom that makes you jaded as if you don’t want to let anyone close to you. Or, you don’t want others to know your name -because that can end up in pain, too.

Someone is under my skin. What has happened, can’t be undone and that challenges me and tests my character. Sadly, there is respect for humility, which is not letting my desire for her get in the way of going against my impulses. It’s the battle of fighting against vanity and desire for certainty. It has become a moral enterprise.

Character tests are omnipresent in today’s life. It is possible to be heroic if you’re staying on the sideline. It is possible to be strong if you’re just waiting to be chased. But those things don’t make for a late-night blog post.