Decency as a Radical Choice: A Campfire Conversation with Kerem Durdag
Kerem Durdag came to the United States as a young immigrant. He built a life, a career, a family. And along the way, he developed a philosophy that sounds simple but is anything but: decency is a radical choice.
This Campfire Conversation explored what it means to choose decency in a world that often rewards the opposite. Kerem talked about the immigrant experience with a directness that made me uncomfortable in the best way. He named xenophobia not as an abstract concept but as something he’s felt in his body. The looks. The assumptions. The moments when belonging was conditional.
What struck me most was how Kerem connected decency to physical proximity. He argued that most prejudice can’t survive closeness. When you actually sit with someone, eat with them, hear their story, the fears that distance creates start to dissolve.
That maps directly to what I’ve been exploring on this adventure. Fear thrives on distance. Love requires proximity. And decency, the kind Kerem practices, is what happens when you choose to stay close even when it would be easier to pull away.
He also reframed what strength looks like for men. In his telling, decency isn’t softness. It’s one of the hardest things you can practice. It means holding your ground without losing your humanity. It means being kind when the world gives you every reason not to be.
This conversation left me thinking about how many of us confuse toughness with strength. Kerem showed me that real strength might look a lot more like choosing decency when nobody’s watching.
Read the full piece on Substack
Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org
