My mother has the curious habit of sending me wisdom in fragments — a clipping from a paper, a quote from a professor, a paragraph that appears ordinary until it detonates in your mind hours later. Last week, she sent me one such piece. It spoke of nuclear deterrence — of how the truest test of a civilisation’s progress is not its arsenal of destruction but its ability to hold its fire. To act and yet not annihilate. To possess power but not perform it.

It struck me first as a political statement and then — as all my mother’s missives do — as something profoundly personal. Because what is deterrence, if not the maturity to pause before reaction? To know you can wound but choose not to. To hold both rage and restraint in the same trembling hand and still pick kindness.

In that moment, I r

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