Henry David Thoreau Reviews Modern Slang: “Simp"

To be labeled a simp in modern parlance is to stand accused of the cardinal sin of our age: caring too much. Particularly for a woman. It is a term deployed less as jest than as warning, as if affection itself were a form of moral weakness.

I confess, I am both amused and alarmed.

In my time, a man might wander into the woods for love of nature, or stand hatless in the rain for a glimpse of the beloved, and be called a poet. Today, it seems, he is called a simp.

Tell me: must every gesture of tenderness be filtered through irony and suspicion? Is not the willingness to admire, to uplift, to serve in devotion—so long as it be freely chosen—not the very mark of a noble heart?

If it is simping to admire the wild plum for blooming without reward, or to tend to one's beans though they may never thank you—then brand me such with a hot iron.

But I suspect the term arises not merely from jest, but fear. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of losing status. Fear that to express love unguardedly is to relinquish power.

To this I say: power is nothing beside presence.

Let others hoard their pride and pretend detachment. I will continue to write of frogs and snow and the trembling of unseen wings. Not because it makes me less—but because it makes me whole.

So call me a simp, if you must.

I have stood motionless for hours watching a bird bathe in the shallows.
You have not.

— H.D.T., unashamed admirer of everything real.