Some years ago, there was this brief, bright chapter of my life where I was writing protocols for the Amnis flow cytometer as if I'd been born to do flow cytometry, which, let's be clear, I absolutely was not. But there I was, middle of a night, exhausted after full day of work and study, giddily learning how to pipette like a pro, running samples, spinning tubes in the centrifuge (basically a high-speed salad spinner for cells that hate imbalance), and thinking with immense gratitude: Wait, is this really a part of my life now?

It wasn't supposed to be. I'm a philosopher, among other things... allegedly. Supposed to be writing about minds, meaning, perception, pretending I understand Kant. But instead, I found myself shoulder-deep in lasers and flow cytometers, making sense of scatter plots and fluorescent intensity. And, weirdly, it clicked. Because isn't philosophy just another form of data analysis? A messier one, maybe - less flow rates, more about meaning scatter. More about watching how light moves through us, what gets absorbed, what gets scattered?

And then there was her. My friend. My lab-sherpa. My scientific Virgil. Mentoring me with equal parts brilliance and patience. Watching her in her element felt like magic. Wu-wei: effortless action. Pure fluency. No posturing. Just presence. 

The light, in flow cytometry, of course, was everything. Not the sci-fi "lasers-blasting-through-cells" kind, but more subtle. You stain proteins with what's basically invisible ink: fluorescent dyes attached to antibodies. When a laser hits, those dyes react, they emit light, and just for a moment, the invisible becomes visible. Each color corresponds to a different protein, a different truth. What you see isn't the cell itself, but how it responds to being asked a question by light. 

It's beautiful and so profoundly human - the light. 

Something about this research process - watching how cells interact with light and how it reveals what we couldn't otherwise see - made my philosophical heart stupidly happy. I found once again that wisdom isn't hiding in one discipline, language, or way of seeing. It's scattered, like photons, across wildly diverse places. Accessible to all, in ways that resonate with the unique ways we find joy.

And my beloved neuroscience? Oh, it was having a field day. Every 3 a.m. lab session was a playground of novelty, attention, and reward circuitry. Dopamine loves a challenge after all, especially when paired with friendship, learning, and the occasional existential spiral while the flow cytometer warms up. This research adventure wasn't just abstract thinking. It was whole-body knowing, encoded in muscle memory and awe. 

Now my partner in crime is leaving. Nine years of freeing friendship, mentorship, mischief, and late-night science, and it's time for her next chapter. I'm thrilled for her. But I'm also quietly gutted. Finding someone who lets you into their world like that, with no gatekeeping, no ego, and just invitation, is rare. So I'm retreating into solitude, writing, coffee, long walks, and a bit of painting with light, and, of course, learning something new. 

This whole experience made me think about how nuanced this is: letting someone into your space, your craft, and your joy. It's not a battlefield. Not a competition. Not something to conquer or compare. Even though some desperately try to make it so. 

It's a gift. 

If someone shows you their world, especially the part that lights them up, the only proper response is to be a gracious visitor. Gentle. Curious. Present. I've learned this both from being invited in and inviting those who didn't quite know how to receive it. Those who mistook my pure joy for arrogance and curiosity for competition. I hold that, too, not with resentment, but with softness. We're all learning how to be in each other's worlds. Some lessons arrive with light. Some with friction. Both teach.

So what now? Well, I will go on and cope the way I always do, by diving into another thing I don't yet understand. That's just how I'm wired. Some people process with stillness. I do it with insatiable cognitive motion, which, interestingly enough, may look like stillness from the outside. I do it by throwing myself into what may appear like another wildly unrelated field and seeing what moves me and what sticks. Even as I miss her, I am sure that in my pursuit of knowledge , I will inevitably find another evidence of interconnectedness that will bring me peace. I also know that this unquenchable internal fire, this connection fueled so well, will continue to refuse to stop being lit up by the world. 

Maybe that's what I'm always chasing with photography, too. That kind of light. That kind of presence. That moment where everything aligns, and you don't have to explain it; you just see it. Maybe even feel it.

I'll miss her. But I'll carry the protocols, the philosophy, the scatter plots, and the light. And a lot of gratitude for the fact that philosophy, as always, somehow, led me here.