Recently, I travelled to Santorini, a paradise of silvery silhouettes of the caldera and the enthralling, fresh mist of the Aegean, yet attempted to not miss the most vital thread: the people who call a ‘touristified’ holiday haven home.

I chatted with a tall, sincere, jolly man, Pericles, who has spent eight seasons working in the heart of Santorini’s hospitality sector. In a world that often feels divided, he spoke to me about a Greek frequency that still vibrates today: a mindset of hospitality.

*

Wafi: You’ve been here for eight seasons now. That’s a lot of time. What has working here taught you about yourself and about what truly matters in the world?

Pericles: What matters here on the island, especially during the season, is that our guests have a good time, good food, good information.

Wafi: What brought you into hospitality? Is it a family history?

Pericles: My family is not only in this sector, though much of my family on other islands work with tourists now. But for me, it is in our DNA. If you know of Zeus from ancient times—Zeus Xenios [the protector of guests]—I think that it is inside us. The Greek mindset. It is out in the hospitality in Greece.

*

For me, this was the ‘human thread’ in its purest form. Xenia—the Greek law of guest friendship and ritualised hospitality—wasn’t just a courtesy; it was an acknowledgement that we are all bound by the same need for belonging.

*

Wafi: To all the tourists who flock here, do you think there is something they don’t understand about Santorini, or even about Greece?

Pericles: They come for vacations, to have a good time, and that is important. But I think they miss the history. This island has more than 7,000 years of history. That is the most important thing to understand—it’s a very historical island.

*

I do wonder whether the present is the most chaotic time in history, or whether it is too naïve to think so, and rather, history contained as many oxymoronic beliefs and controversial actions, yet they stayed blanketed; and the present simply allows us every possible platform to express our thoughts.

*

Wafi: My last question: if every single person in the world was listening to you right now, what one message would you give them?

Pericles: Come to Greece! For the food, for the history. But most importantly... Respect. Respect everybody. It doesn’t matter the colour, the religion, or where they came from. You must have respect for everybody. That is the lesson I live by every day.

*

As we took a selfie and parted ways, his words lingered. In my study of PPE (Philosophy, Politics, Economics), we search for complex solutions to global divisions. Yet, here was a man in a bustling restaurant, distilling his life’s work into a single, foundational thread: the language of mutual respect.

Standing crooked, hardly moving, yet central, as if posing in a frame. Layers and layers of dark, he blended in with his lifeless surroundings. He wore plain black overalls that had evidently turned grey amongst countless coatings of soot. If he were not wearing clothes, his bony ribs would show. Below his overalls, thick, black sandals bore his hardened feet. His grimy toenails lurched out; their length indicating his longstanding indifference to his appearance. What creature could live with such little dignity? Was the nature of humanity not instituted in pride and esteem?

I noticed the hissing of dust as it slithered off his sandals: he took his first step. Oblivious of my presence, his back turned to me, I heard a click of his joints as he sluggishly limped towards a shelf, while gripping a large canvas. His steps didn’t echo, nor make the slightest of sounds that would alarm even the shyest of squirrels outside. This was his world. Like Sisyphus with his boulder, he simply ploughed forward. Although it was crystal clear this was no work that could not be marked as futile, he seemed to work nonchalantly, in robotic, inveterate, minuscule movements, nothing of interest, nor any semblance of resentment. Trudging along, he reached the shelf. His stature was evidently not one designed for lifting. He swung his body down, and ruggedly threw the canvas onto a stack of similar ones that lay on the shelf towering above him. As he hinged, I glimpsed the side of his face. Wrinkles of old age had shredded away the skin, and his jaw defined his greyish cheek. His nose jutted out, and coarse facial hair seemed to abrade his face, exacerbating his indifference to physical appearance. His eye was bland. It expressed no emotion. The window to his soul was opaque.

As he swung down to launch another canvas to the top of the shelf, I noticed it was a placard. In scrawny brushstrokes was painted the word ‘Peace’ and the background contained black and white stripes, perhaps once illuminating colours and memories that had now evanesced in this basement of despondency. As he stretched, and his shirt pulled with his wrist exposed, I made out a dove in tattoo ink. Next to it was printed an infinity sign. It was the only sight I had noticed so far that had collected no dust. Yet, though it’s sharpness panged my eyes in the apathetic atmosphere around him, I could not stop pondering upon his evident insistence on concealing his ink.

He shelved the canvas.

After having strained to reach the shelf, his back crouched again, and his knees bent in light of his minimal strength. Silence. In his stillness, I experienced a moment of revelation about my presence. For minutes I had been observing this man in intrigue, but now I felt I could not predict his next movement. I wondered what he felt, staring up at the heap of canvases he, presumably, had archived. Did he feel a sense of remorse? Or any emotion at all? Was his seeming indifference infinite?

He emanated a sense of security, contrary to my uncertainty. Although his movements so confounding to my eyes, he was only repeating a mundane routine. Numb. Immune to the deathly echoes of every click and creak in his labour. I spotted his wrinkle-laced fingers reaching up and gently stroking one of the canvases; he seemed to trace his finger along written words and whisper them to himself. I felt even more perplexed. This was no unemotional interaction. Even in the solemn, susurrant whistle of his voice was an inflexion that gave away his emotional susceptibility. Perhaps a memory. But one thing was true: he was not apathetic; rather, in his perceived attempt at expressionless acts, fallible.

His hand came back down to his side. He slowly turned his head. I flinched. But it did not seem as if he was uncovering my presence newly, rather, acknowledging me. As much as I expected a pale, disfigured, unsettling face, he looked at me with an impassive expression, monotonous eyes and a dormant kindness in his eyebrows that seemed determined to overlook my prying, watchful judgements. I could not pretend anymore. I stood up straight and slowly approached him, my eyes still transfixed upon his. I had become so engrossed in this man’s actions I had ignored the details that made him initially so fascinating. Long hairs along his forearms, small, yet significant marks on his hands, signals of his hard labour, and a skinny, hunched figure.

“You’ve been watching a long time.”

His voice, dry, papery, rasping, was exactly as I had imagined upon hearing his earlier whispers. His tone wasn’t accusatory, simply an observation. It was as if there was a serenity in the dull solitude of his surroundings that had become infused within him. Radiating calm.

I felt speechless, not in awe, simply curious. “What are they?”, I said, nodding my head to the stacks of canvases.

“Hopes. All of them are hopes. Were.”

I didn’t understand, but he seemed aware of my silence to his ambiguity. He turned his back and limped once again towards the canvases, and signalled me to follow. I did.

He finally reached a slightly torn, arcane canvas with crisp edges of thick dust. His shoulders shrunk slightly—a small, solemn surrender. The canvas sat against the wall, in rest, smeared with ink. It was a banner. Once bright, now faded. Yet, scrawled upon the canvas, I could still make out an incomplete statement: ‘Justice for’.

He looked at me. His eyes still bland, yet there was a desperation within them: a desire for me to comprehend. His presence felt ancient to me now. I felt restless, in need of clear answers.

“What do you do with these?” I asked.

“I shelve them. I tend to them. I reset them. If no one tends to dying hopes, removes them from the public eye, they rot. They poison. They stagnate. They make people cynical, bitter, stubborn, and dead. Convinced that nothing ever changes. Hope must be constructive. If hope begins to divide, then there is no need for hope at all.”

I tensed. Then, I remembered the engraving of a dove on his wrist. Benign in size, yet so magnificent in its peculiarity, I felt assertive, confident.

“You have hope.” I declared.

Still tranquil, from the heart of reason, he explained. “Look closely. Its wings have begun to fade.” He waited a moment for me to understand, and then pulled down his sleeve.

I stared at him in confusion.

“This place preys on hope. It dissolves my hope. Drowns it in crushed dreams and purposeful injustice. But the time I spend here, I save the dreams of humanity. I save it from a cage of dead hopes.” As he said this seemingly concluding statement, he swivelled his head around the stacks of canvases, banners, bloody flags. Thousands of wishes left unfulfilled. With that, he turned and limped to the next canvas he was yet to shelve, with the same mechanical grace.

I felt an emancipated hope within me. Real, existential, powerful. And yet, it was fragile.

The night whistles silvery silhouettes

To those who persist,

That they exist.

The night, commander, howls;

Shadows loom larger;

They are submissive.

The mist of the moon, a fickle glimmer:

Magpies its very light;

A philosopher calls out for the truth, “Night, enlighten me!”

He is unappeased.

The stars, sprinkled far and wide, crackle, fizz, dissolve;

He is disheartened.

The night is merciful, but stubborn;

A will to gatekeep wisdom;

He is unslaked.

For those who seek it,

Indeed the night petrifies;

For those who inadvertently encounter,

The night is a revelation.

The night is a rose;

Pricks of supernatural;

Preying on colossal fear;

For those who resist plucking at its mysteries,

Uncover its invisible secrets.

The philosopher claims to discern reality,

Penetrating mere illusion.

Yet light eludes.

Must not then day betray?

But if day betrays, then night is right.

A right reality.

For weepers and sorrowers,

The night is serenity.

For the joyous likewise,

The night bequeaths peaceful slumber.

For the contemplators,

The night a wondrous span of thought.

Yet the fearful do suffer,

For them, the night most unenlightening.

Illusory.

The night may never be won.

For the night is eternally knowledgable.

Nay, the fearful eternally oblivious.

That the night is not a contest,

Yet some are still crowned victors:

Victors of the Night.

I am a solitary hermit in a field of confusion;

I remain past the dusk emitting disillusion;

I am the one who understands;

For I do not build with the sand.

My value is undeniably less than a grain;

Yet in the storm I am not the one who feigns

Integrity. I am the solidarity of the land;

For I do not build with the sand.

When the sun does shine, they carve gilded spires;

Gold mammoth palaces, laid upon their pyres.

But I will be safe when tide strikes strand;

For I do not build with the sand.

When the wind comes calling, where is your refuge?

When the hail shrieks curses, you find no blameable deluge;

Your castles are bleak: on illusions you stand;

For that is why I do not build with the sand.

Behind them are grand houses, colours ablaze;

They boast vast vineyards, all are transiently fazed;

But mortar of ego, bricks of brittle pride;

All do crumble when reckoning arrives

Just like the castles, they are a living death;

Singing silent screams, awaiting their last breath.

At the setting of the sun, they are grey all around;

As if they were built from the same sand.

Then comes the awakening, the storm finds its prey;

Castles and palaces lay in disarray.

The kings of the beach flee now forgotten;

Their wrecked creations are all they had begotten

The dawn finds the shore swept smooth and clean;

Freshly bequeathed for new folly to be seen.

My still dark attire, my isolated brand;

I am the one who did not build with the sand.

I continue to shape my lone stone sequel;

The fools of the past, they were never truly evil.

But in their futile formations, they now understand;

For never to build with the sand.

This poem is a relentless argument for building our legacies in this world on strong foundations. It urges us to critically analyse the true impact of our lifestyles. We must question whether our actions are based on false assumptions, not just regarding people, but organisations, governments and our own biases. The poem does not advocate for tearing down our lives to first principles, but it pleads us to identify the solid stones of truth, integrity and impact that are the building blocks for an enduring legacy.

I speak the Unlanguage, the others speak it too;

You skip our gentle voices; to you, our story is a ruse.

I speak the Unlanguage, the language of the true;

It is concealed deep inside me, how can you think you speak it too?

My voice only a thread, you effortlessly ignore;

But the rope of language is a merciful saviour to those who implore.

It heeds no one else but the hanging men who hope, in pleading tones they sing;

It dreams of nothing else but enjoining the hands of those whose unheard yearns ring.

The Unlanguage is whole, sweet in its harmony;

Taunts do not taint it, pain does not stain it.

My bloody tears are droplets, droplets in the ocean;

The Unlanguage hides them, gathering in its whirling motion.

Silent in whistling breaths, a roar bashes beneath;

Like waves crashing the surface, a tale throbs underneath.

The Unlanguage violently accumulates, tranquil from afar;

Silently breeding, its eventual release inevitable to leave scars.

It does not argue with the tide, nor battles the raging sun;

The oppressors incessantly strike, one day, the battle will be won.

The Unlanguage is sweet but bitter to the oblivious;

Don’t swagger with imposition, else you’ll make it obvious.

The Unlanguage repels coddle, it turns away to the crude;

Yet its arms embrace the authentic, who walk their intentions nude.

The Unlanguage is free, but unlike the freed, it despairs;

The seekers may seek it, and let it out if they dare.

If they dare, they must hold, the crown of humility,

The sceptre of empowerment, the majesty of humanity.

Our filtered narratives, myopic insurmountability;

Indeed they are encumbrances, we simply usurped superiority.

Let the Unlanguage dismantle them, they hinder our uniqueness;

What we should really call: our incompleteness.

The essence of journalism is not the power to storytell, but the power to discover. It is not the power to impose, but the power to uncover. Like a crop that is grown, harvested, cleaned, processed, packaged, transported and then brought to the consumer, our journalistic content is no different. An artless quote is processed into a narrative, elevated into a collective view, transformed into an international story, and finally, instrumentalised — weaponised rather, into an argument backing a political theme.

Over the past decades, journalism has been upended — from a public merit good to a commercial product. In this age, investigation is no longer about discovery. Rather, journalism is now a form of procurement. This model doesn’t unearth hidden perceptions, it hunts for narratives, buys cheap fuel for political fires, all while boasting journalistic integrity, uniqueness and legitimacy. And where the fast-changing rays of politics and public opinion don’t shine, stories go unheard, ignored and purposefully neglected. Those in society that we ignore: they speak the Unlanguage. The Unlanguage is such that it cannot be lured out, nor can a narrative be imposed upon it. It is only accessible through earnest journalism — that seeks a perspective for the fundamental importance of a single untouched viewpoint in itself.

We are all journalists. We find information from our own sources, and categorise it with our own idiosyncrasies, philosophies and stereotypes. We all suffer from our own confirmation biases, bombarding ourselves with self-validating media. It is not in corporate nature to provide us with balanced opinions, rather, the onus is on us to talk, watch, listen to someone new. Let us try to hear the unheard, and in doing so, learn a glimpse of the Unlanguage.

I pull at human threads at the feet of division.

Twisted and tangled, they cackle with derision.

A crumpled throw, crumpled dreams;

I sew and sew, but I shall not sleep.

Does destiny conceal a moment of respite?

Nigh, any repose for me will be transient, a mirage.

Traipsing on the walls my fallacious cloths, my masterpieces;

Vibrant pangs that stain my conscience, nay, my consciousness.

A voice, my voice, bellows;

The penniless child, the sinful servant, the wailing widow;

All of whom you cast into the shadows of the night.

My sky of solidarity, incorrigible holes appear.

My vicinity of peace sectioned by knots of cruelty.

My heartbeat throbs like the saturated colours of my work unsoothing;

I sew and sew, chasing redemption.

My forearms sizzle with pain, spatters of mistakes bombard me;

I see splitting wool, loose threads dangle;

Loose threads of compassion, unity, peace entangled.

You shall reap what you sow, they said.

I did. Seeds of tradition, deeds of pride.

I sew a blanket, to cover my guilt;

Now I sew in vain.

I sew a quilt, to hold me tight;

I sew human threads to shield us from our self-inflicted blight.

Yet even this fleeting fusion of fibres unfit to my purpose;

I sew for salvation, my own, not for all of creation.

I wonder at my artwork, incomplete; wishful;

Can a needle so sharp ever sew gentle?

More loose threads, enjoined no more;

I sew them together, weave over woe.

I scream.

Sew away my invisible sins, forevermore!

Let me sit in peace, sew ethics evermore.

One day I will rise, with a cloth so unblemished;

Too seamless, flawless for a spot on my wall.

Wefts and warps, my remorse unravelled;

Metamorphosed into my forgiving grace.

Not held back by blandness, rather for all to see;

Will I be redeemed, once they see me?

A rocking chair is like a pendulum;

But never will it cease to swing.

I take my last breath, sew my last stitch;

My masterpiece shines, I relive my conquest.

Into the night I shall disappear,

A light left behind, a trail of goodwill.

We all blindingly see the division, conflict, anger engrained in our societies, yet obliviously we prioritise our individual needs over the collective good. There may come a day of reckoning, when we grasp our complicity in the world’s state. But by then, as we desperately try to ‘sew’ ethics into the fabric of our existence, our utopian vision for the world may remain far out of reach. Our lives are ticking away, like the relentless rocking chair we will inevitably occupy one day, and the sheer resources we take for granted may be obsolete. Therefore, we cannot wait to lament the misdeeds of a lifetime. The time for tangible legacies is now, not just messages of goodwill, but actions that truly inspire.

I am Wafi, the creator of The Human Thread. My studies in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) at the London School of Economics, and my passion for journalism in international development, are driven by a desire to understand humanity's core debates over justice, inequality, and power.

A man named Jack once offered me a French fry on a train. That fry turned into a meaningful conversation debating the issues within the British economy.

In the moment I stepped onto the platform, I realised. That conversation was a reminder that behind every ideological Knot is a simple, human Thread waiting to be connected.

Since then, I have strived to create a space for curiosity and the nuanced discussion of our shared human principles.

On The Human Thread, I will produce regular essays that explore these ideas of human thought and story along with a podcast where I travel to find more powerful human stories.

I hope that each of you reading this can think back to a time when you recognised the similarities between your personal principles and those of humanity. I encourage you all to comment, discuss, and if you have something bigger to contribute, feel free to contact me!

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Imagine that string theory was an analogy for human interconnectedness. We are bound by the foundational thread of our survival instincts, our anatomy, even the types of foods that we like to eat. These are threads which strung us together into tribes for centuries, everywhere. Yet, in an increasingly complex world, we are connected by our dedicated newsroom, our political ties, even our chosen method of communication online.

The journalistic world today is in crisis. On the one hand, unfathomable pages of information are available to us at the click of a mouse. But, ask yourself: How much of that information unites our thought and how much divides humanity?

ENTER The Knot.

Knots are the bubbles of divisive opinion and overdramatised journalism that we live in, clusters of similarly thinking identities. But one may question: If we are all threads, bound up in various knots corresponding to our numerous identities, is it not our very nature to make meaning of things, and grant loyalty to certain groups, tribes and ideologies?

Indeed it is! Yet, how caught up do we get in our Knots of agreeing opinions that we forget, that humanity as a whole is attempting to reach the same goals. We may belong to a certain political party, economic agenda, religious group, or any other knot; however, if we zoom out, our ethical principles stand identical, even if our methods of reaching goals may be different.

Therefore, do not be mistaken. The Human Thread is not an appeal to a collective ideology, nor an idealist world. It is not a call to untie our Knots. It is simply a platform to showcase the hidden similarities between human thought and the silent voices of humans around us, which we hear yet may not listen to.

Through articles on our shared human thinking within the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, politics and economics, as well as a podcast with bitesize interviews and life lessons from daily interactions with humans around the world on-the-go, you can begin to listen to the voices that we ignore.

I invite you to subscribe for free, and journey through the world of human thought and story.