Holding the Candle

Philippe Beaudoin · March 1, 2026

There’s a story that’s been coming back to me a lot lately. A story that feels especially vital right now. As much in the face of our technological shifts as in the geopolitical chaos and the dehumanizing bullshit of our “decision-makers.”

A.J. Muste was a peace activist. During the Vietnam War, he would frequently stand—often alone—in front of the White House. He’d go there at night, holding a single lit candle as a protest.

One day, a reporter asked him if he really thought that standing there all by himself in the rain was going to change the country.

“Oh! I don’t do it to change the country,” he said. “I do it so the country doesn’t change me.”

It’s like that “sign in the greengrocer’s window” from Mark Carney’s speech, but the active version. The soft resistance version. Finding that one thing in us that we refuse to let change, and having the humility to remember that we only preserve it through the actions we take.

For me, it’s my kindness. My softness. My ability to recognize the softness and kindness in others. My ability to touch, to kiss, to hold someone in my gaze. To let myself feel what he or she or they are feeling. To say: “It hurts like fucking hell to see you like this, but I’m choosing to see you anyway.”

It doesn’t matter where they come from. It doesn’t matter what they look like. I want to leave all the baggage I’m carrying and just let myself be there, in the other person’s emotion—the one I’m human enough to feel.

That’s my candle. It doesn’t change countries, but it stops countries from changing me. Against all odds, under the rain, painfully sometimes… It stops the world from changing me.