“Against” is a funny preposition

Consider these two sentences:

He stands against oppression.

He stands against the wall.

"Against” describes a relationship between two things that rely on each other and prop each other up. When you seriously oppose something, you’re against it because you choose to lean your identity on it, to use it as a reference point for making sense of yourself and your place in the world.

The purpose of this newsletter is to allow leaves of thought to grow up against time’s trellis, like ivy growing up a garden wall. Subscribe if you’d like to take a regular peek at what’s I’ve been growing. What I aim to cultivate most of all in these pages is Hope.