Daily Inspiration Quote by Douglas Wilson

There is a quiet, lived-in bluntness to Douglas Wilson's line: it isn't a slogan, it's a map of proximity. By leading with "Being in the design industry", he frames HIV/AIDS not as an abstract crisis but as something shaped by networks of work, taste, and community. The phrasing matters. "I've tended to meet" sounds casual, almost statistical, as if he's admitting a pattern he didn't set out to find. That understatement is the point: it normalizes contact and refuses the melodrama people often demand when HIV/AIDS enters the conversation.

The subtext is about how industries create their own microclimates of risk, support, visibility, and vulnerability. Design, especially in the late-20th-century cultural imagination, is coded as urban, queer-adjacent, and community-driven; Wilson doesn't need to spell any of that out. He gestures toward it with a professional identifier that doubles as a social locator. The line also quietly critiques the comforting fiction that illness is evenly distributed and therefore equally noticed. Many people can claim ignorance because their circles insulate them. Wilson is saying his didn't.

Intent-wise, he's positioning himself as someone whose empathy is experiential, not performative. He isn't claiming expertise on HIV/AIDS; he's claiming witness. That choice lowers defenses. It invites the listener to consider how their own workplace and friendships either expose them to hard realities or keep them conveniently at arm's length.