Dear future hubster

 Dear future hubster,  somebody once asked me "what radicalised you?"and of course that question carries a lot of value judgement already, because it implies that I'm somehow more radical than... the average? the acceptable? the expected? And the answer to that leading question is either that life radicalised me, mine and that of others, what I've seen and how that aligned with or differed from what I'd believed to be true, or, maybe, that my beliefs are neither radical nor naïve, and wanting to live in a world where everybody can be safe and healthy and happy shouldn't be a utopia to be laughed at. I'm far from being the first or only one to think and say that there is nothing radical in believing that people shouldn't starve or freeze or work themselves to death, and that nobody's life should be considered expendable.  What the question and the person was alluding to is probably more along the lines of "What made you so vocal about so many t...

 Dear future hubster, when things get hard, or actually when they just get a bit much, and we're lucky enough to have people to turn to, and in a low-key way, because we don't want to or we don't know how to say that things are hard or maybe just a bit much, and some of us don't know how to say that we need some saving because we don't recognise the signs in ourselves; and then the people we want to turn to just show up in low-key ways before we could even ask; and they do their low-key things in their low-key ways like let's go have fries on a random Monday like we're Belgians (only to find that Frit Flagey is closed on Mondays), or let's go watch St Gilles play agains Fenerbahçe, or let's buy all the baby clothes and visit our new nieces in Paris, or let's go to a fancy tea place and eat weird stinky cheesecake or let's rent a kayak because it's a gorgeous day on the canals and we can get koffie to boat, or let's go hike down the Mo...

 Dear future hubster, please, please, always hold my hand - literally more so than figuratively. Hold my hand, kiss me on all the bridges, at all the red lights, put your arm around my shoulder on the way to the train station, brush my face from across the dinner table. Physical touch is my love language yeah yeah, but also, joy shouldn't be hidden. Affection should be loud, love should be in the air. Out in the open, so it feels unrestricted, where it can expand, as love is supposed to, so it can touch everything and everyone around.  So yes, kiss me in public, as a quiet revolution, in service of the greater good. 

 Dear future hubster,  when you share a book with somebody, how do you choose which one it should be? Is it something you think they would like, or is it something you like and want them to know it too? Do you want to share an experience with them? Do you want to show them a piece of your soul, in a relatively safe way, since the words written are somebody else's, you're not even a vessel for them, you're but a distant, shy promoter, gently guiding text and reader towards each other? Do you want them to feel what you felt? Do you want to think that now there is a feeling you share? Is it some secret, sacred joint knowledge, like watching the same improv play, knowing that this is the only moment it can exist, and those experiencing it are joint in a quiet, inconsequential, and elusive bind? Are you then, maybe unconsciously, maybe unintentionally, trying to create that bind? To signal that "here, in the reading in this book, we belong together"?

 Dear future hubster,  my supermarket rose, one which I became - was made? - responsible for against my own will and despite what I thought were very clear statements regarding how I don't  want flowers, well, that rose is now entering its second year and decided to teach me a very unsurprising, annoyingly didactic, and yet somehow profound lesson.  It decided to reward the two repotting, the watering, the coffee grains, the crushed eggshells, the sticky things that are supposed to catch bugs, and the motivational talks with not one, but three new buds (and counting). I know that this is what roses are supposed to do. What I also know is that the repotting was reluctant, the watering sometimes rhapsodic, the coffee and the eggshells a bit of a desperate move to counter the not always exactly heartfelt motivational talks. In short, I know that I wasn't always fully committed to raising this rose, and that it would have been understandable if it didn't thrive. I would ...