I watched a very stupid Bollywood movie recently.

And I mean very stupid. I had to suspend every ounce of logic while watching it, and I wasn’t expecting to learn anything from it. I wasn’t even expecting to remember the plot the next morning. Except I came out of it thinking about my own life, which was kind of annoying.

There was something about the way the characters lived and the choices they made that made me start questioning things about myself. And after a point I had to stop and think: why am I letting a completely fictional person influence my real-life thought process?

You watch someone quit their job and move to another country and seeing that, your own life feels a little too comfortable. A character in a movie falls madly in love and you start questioning your relationship.

We have not had enough time to understand what constant exposure to fictional lives is doing to our brains. We’re probably one of the first generations to consume stories at this scale. There is always something to watch, all the time. The story doesn’t end when the credits roll anymore. You can spend the next three days on the internet watching people discuss it. And then there’s another show. We’ve built a second world that we can enter whenever real life gets boring.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s one of the best things about being alive right now. Stories can give you language for things you couldn’t explain yourself. Some movies have the power to make you want to be braver, kinder, more curious. You might see a version of a life you’ve never considered and think, wait, I want that. That’s very special.

We do need to consider though, that we’re watching people whose lives have been written to have meaning. Every conversation has a purpose. The main character usually learns the lesson by the end. Real life is much less cooperative.

You can spend six months confused about something and never get a satisfying explanation. A completely uneventful day will usually not lead to some beautiful revelation later. And maybe watching so many neatly packaged stories makes our own lives feel strangely unfinished. I catch myself doing it sometimes. A movie will make me think about something I had never questioned before. But maybe I don’t need to figure out what my feelings “mean” every single time they appear.

I find this part difficult because I don’t want to become someone who watches things without letting them affect me. I love that art makes me think. I love when a song changes the way I remember a person or a movie makes me look at something differently. I just think there has to be a little distance between being moved by a story and using it as a blueprint for your own life.

Because some movies really do teach you something about yourself. But I also just watched a ridiculous Bollywood movie on a Tuesday night and enjoyed it. Both are allowed to be true.

The skill we need in this era isn’t consuming less, it’s learning when to close the screen and come back to our own lives.

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There is something so powerful about being convinced that your life will work out, even when you have absolutely no evidence that it will. I feel like self-belief might be one of the few things in life that genuinely belongs to you.

Rejection feels very different when you don’t interpret it as a verdict on yourself. Someone not choosing you doesn’t automatically mean you weren’t worth choosing. Sometimes it just means that particular person, place or opportunity wasn’t where you were meant to spend your energy.

There is something liberating about not needing every door to open. Self belief helps you to stop trying to convince people to see your value because you trust yourself enough to know that you will find something that fits you better. I also think there is a slightly delusional element to self-belief that we should all embrace. Sometimes you have to be a little unreasonable about the person you believe you can become. There will be moments when the evidence says you’re nowhere close, and you still have to act as though you’re on your way.

This is what people mean when they talk about manifestation, except I don’t think it’s always about asking the universe for something and waiting for it to arrive. Sometimes believing in a version of yourself so strongly changes the way you behave until you eventually become that person. If you keep telling yourself you’re someone who can figure things out, you start taking more chances. You become less afraid of looking stupid because the opinion you have of yourself isn’t hanging entirely on what everyone else thinks. And slowly, the belief becomes evidence.

It’s a beautiful thing to build trust with yourself through hundreds of tiny moments where you do what you said you would do, survive things you thought would break you, and discover that your life didn’t end just because something didn’t work out. Eventually, your own opinion of yourself becomes the loudest one in the room.

There will still be days when you doubt yourself, of course. Self-belief isn’t thinking you’re amazing every morning while staring into the mirror. It’s being able to have a bad day without deciding you’re a failure. You can question your decisions without questioning your worth.

The universe doesn’t actually start “working in your favour” because you convinced it that you deserve something, but believing things will work out simply makes you behave differently. You notice opportunities you might have ignored and keep going when someone else would have stopped. Walking away from what isn’t right instead of desperately trying to make it right becomes easier for you.

You become more available to the life you keep saying you want.

I don’t exactly know what my life is going to look like. I don’t know which plans will work, which people will stay, which dreams will change shape or which version of myself I’ll eventually grow into.

But I want to keep one belief intact through all of it: that I can handle whatever comes next.

People can take opportunities away from you. They can change their minds about you. They can leave. Circumstances can humble you in ways you never expected. But they don’t get to decide what you believe about yourself. And if you’re lucky, that belief becomes the one thing you carry into every room, every rejection, every beginning and every uncertain chapter.

A little voice saying,

We’ll figure it out.

And somehow, we ALWAYS do.

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“Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.”

Shakespeare really did have a way of saying things that make you feel attacked even four hundred years later. The older I get, the more I realise how often we confuse more with better.

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about what our relationship with “excess” is. We know, almost instinctively, that too much of anything isn’t good for us, and yet we seem to live in extremes. We either want something completely or convince ourselves we shouldn’t have it at all. There is very little room for simply having enough.

Before I start I should clarify that I am not asking you to live less-abundantly. Go dream of reaching the stars! This is just me talking about how too much of something can cause more issues than you’d think.

I notice this most with food. I’ve spent sooo much of my time thinking about what I should and shouldn’t eat, especially with how much nutrition content is thrown at us every day. One week sugar is the bad for you, the next it’s seed oils, then it’s gluten, then it’s processed food, then suddenly everyone is drinking some expensive powder that fixes everything. It becomes very easy to start seeing food as a collection of rules rather than something that is also supposed to bring us nourishment, pleasure and, honestly a little happiness.

I’m still struggling with this myself, so I’m not saying this from some perfectly balanced place. Sometimes I eat more than I intended and then feel guilty about it. There are also days when I become very conscious of what I’m eating and start treating certain foods like they are something I need to earn. But I’m starting to think that a healthier relationship with food probably isn’t about eliminating everything that’s considered “bad.”

I’m trying to tell myself that I can have the fries without thinking I’ve ruined my day and I can eat dessert without promising myself I’ll compensate for it tomorrow. Eating well is less about never eating junk and more about not needing junk food to make up most of what I eat. The goal should be being able to enjoy something without feeling like I’ve lost control.

And this idea extends far beyond food. Even healthy living can become unhealthy when we take it too far. Exercise is good for you, but obsessing over every missed workout isn’t. Caring about nutrition is good, but constantly worrying about whether something is “clean” can make eating stressful. Looking after your body should ideally make you feel more at ease inside it, not make you paranoid about every little thing you put into it.

It gets tough when you start becoming so obsessed with being healthy that your pursuit of health starts taking away your peace.

Money has a similar contradiction. Financial security can give you freedom, comfort and choices that most people would be grateful to have. But I've also noticed how easily “I want enough to be comfortable” becomes “I need more.” There is always another salary bracket, another investment, another thing you could afford if you earned a little more. At some point, having more doesn't necessarily make you feel more secure; it can simply give you more to worry about losing. The number keeps moving because the definition of enough keeps moving with it.

Even ambition can become excessive. I love the idea of working hard and wanting more from life, but there is a strange culture around productivity where being busy has almost become proof that you’re doing something meaningful. A quiet day can make you feel guilty. Rest needs to be justified. Sitting around doing nothing can feel uncomfortable because somewhere along the way we’ve started measuring our days by how much we got out of them. It’s possible to be ambitious without making your entire identity dependent on how much you accomplish.

And then there’s love, which might be the easiest thing to romanticise into excess. Loving someone deeply is beautiful, but I don’t think another person is supposed to become your entire world. You can love someone and still have your own interests, friendships, routines and ambitions. You can miss them without needing to constantly talk to them. You can care deeply without losing yourself in the process. Sometimes even something as beautiful as love becomes suffocating when there is simply too much of it in one place.

What does balance actually even mean to me?

Definitely not splitting my life into perfectly measured portions of work, food, money, exercise, relationships and rest, but being aware enough to notice when something has started taking up more space than it needs to. There will be weeks when work needs more of you and weeks when your personal life does. There will be days when you eat very well and days when you order something oily & fried at midnight. Sometimes you’ll save money and sometimes you’ll spend it on a trip you’ll remember for years. Balance doesn’t mean every day looks the same. It means your life, taken as a whole, still feels like yours.

I’m still learning this, particularly with food. I don’t always know when I’m genuinely hungry, when I’m bored, when I’m stressed or when I just want something because it tastes good. But that’s also the point.

We don’t need to deprive ourselves of the things we enjoy. We just need to stop letting them consume us.

Because almost everything in life is good in the right amount. Food. Money. Fitness. Work. Love. Even discipline. The difficult part isn’t figuring out what is good for us. It’s learning when enough is enough.

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Imagine this: you sprain your ankle, and instead of letting it recover, you go to brunch, book a vacation, and pretend walking doesn’t hurt. It sounds ridiculous.

But I think that’s exactly how many of us deal with emotional pain.

Don’t get me wrong: I love doing those things. Some of my happiest memories have come from forcing myself out of the house on days when I wanted to stay in bed. Joy has its place. Laughter has its place. Being around people who love you can be incredibly healing.

But I can’t help but wonder if we’ve begun expecting happiness to do a job it was never meant to do. Happiness can interrupt pain but it can’t always process it. After something difficult happens, the advice is almost always the same: Keep yourself busy.

I thought that was great advice because staying busy keeps you from spiralling. It reminds you that life still exists outside of whatever broke your heart. But I don’t think we normalize sitting with ourselves enough. Not making plans simply because being alone sounds unbearable.

Letting every thought you’ve been outrunning finally catch up to you.

It’s awful.

Your brain doesn’t suddenly become wise. It is loud. It replays conversations. It imagines different endings. It asks questions that don’t have answers. Sometimes it says things you don’t even agree with. And that’s exactly why so many of us avoid it.

It’s much easier to believe another weekend staycation, another shopping spree, another distraction will make us feel better than it is to sit alone with a feeling that refuses to leave.

Unprocessed emotions will always wait for you. They’ll let you enjoy small moments outside. But they’ll always meet you when you get home. I don’t think healing happens because you never distract yourself. I think it happens when you stop relying on distraction as your only coping mechanism. Because one day the plans end, and eventually, it’s just you.

Your relationship with yourself is the only one that’s guaranteed to last your entire life. At some point, every one of us has to learn how to sit in a room alone with our own mind without immediately trying to escape it. I’ve found that the hardest conversations I’ve ever had haven’t been with other people. They’ve been with myself. The ones where I had to admit what I was actually afraid of, what I was avoiding and what I was grieving. They’re uncomfortable and they’re rarely productive in the moment. But almost every time I’ve come out the other side understanding myself a little better than I did before.

Happiness gives us moments to breathe, but healing asks us to stay.

And as uncomfortable as it is, I’ve started believing that the moments we spend understanding ourselves are the ones that change us the most.

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I had a rough day recently. It was just one of those days where everything felt heavy. The things happening in our country right now didn’t help how I was feeling either: there was rage, disappointment and exhaustion. By the time I got into bed, I’d already decided what tomorrow was going to look like. I’d skip my workout. Sleep in. Start again on Monday, or next week.

When my alarm rang the next morning, I almost laughed because the version of me from the night before had already made a decision.

But I got up anyway.

I got dressed. Finished my workout. Came home and started my day.

The funny thing is, the workout didn’t magically fix anything. I didn’t leave feeling like a new person. I was still carrying everything I’d gone to bed with. The only thing that had changed was that I’d stopped waiting to feel different before continuing with my life.

For the longest time, I believed I had to feel like doing something before I did it. I had to feel motivated before working out, inspired before writing, or happy before making plans. As if my emotions were prerequisites for living my life. But they’re really not, they’re just weather. Some days they’re sunny, some days they’re unbearable, and if I waited for perfect weather every single time, I’d probably never leave the house.

Life doesn’t really pause because you’re having a hard week. Emails still arrive. Birthdays still happen. Deadlines don’t become kinder because your heart is heavy.

The good thing is that it just means my emotions don’t have to carry the impossible responsibility of deciding whether my life moves forward or not. I 100% think we should cry when we need to, cancel plans when we’re genuinely burnt out, and let ourselves feel things instead of pretending we’re okay. But lately I’ve started asking myself a different question.

Am I resting because I need rest?

Or am I stopping because my emotions have convinced me that I can’t move until they change?

Those are two very different things.

I think resilience gets misunderstood a lot. We imagine it looking loud when sometimes it looks incredibly ordinary. It could just be waking up after a difficult day and doing the small thing you said you’d do anyway.

Not because you’ve suddenly become disciplined or stopped feeling sad, but because you realized your emotions can accompany you without deciding where you’re headed.

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-People who have friends from completely different walks of life. There’s something so attractive about people who don’t only exist inside one bubble. They could have have a meaningful conversation with their office colleague, the chaiwala downstairs, their grandmother, and the security guard. It tells me you’re interested in people, not just people like you.

-People who are shamelessly obsessed with something. It could be bird photography. Football statistics. Pottery. Watches. Baking sourdough. I genuinely don’t care what it is. Watching someone light up because they finally get to talk about their thing makes them ten times cooler. Passion is contagious.

-People who aren’t embarrassed by where they come from. You don’t have to agree with every tradition you were raised with. You don’t have to praise your hometown either. But there’s something so grounded about people who can say, “Yeah, that’s where I’m from,” without trying to edit parts of themselves to sound more interesting.

-People who don’t look at their phone for the first hour after waking up. This one is pure jealousy. Imagine waking up and your first thought isn’t, “Let me see what everyone else is doing.” Imagine your brain belonging to you before it belongs to Instagram. I aspire to be this person every single day.

-People who casually quote a book or podcast because they genuinely want to share the idea. Not to sound intellectual or prove they’ve read something. Just because they heard a sentence that changed how they think and they want you to have it too. That’s such a generous way to move through the world.

-People who remember their dreams in ridiculous detail. I’ll ask how they slept and somehow end up hearing about a talking pigeon, their third-grade teacher or a blue horse. I have no idea how your brain works, but I’m fascinated by it.

-People who always have a book with them. Maybe they don’t even read it that day. Maybe it just sits in their bag the entire time, it’s also kind of impractical. But I don’t know why, carrying it around feels incredibly chic.

-Strangers who encourage other strangers. The uncle who claps for marathon runners, or the random girl in a trial room who says, “You should buy it, it looks great.” I think about people like that for years.

-Tattoo artists. You’re telling me someone trusted you enough to permanently put ink on their body, and you just... did it? Every single day? The confidence that requires is unbelievable. I think tattoo artists are some of the coolest people alive.

-People who always have mints on them. It’s such a tiny thing, but it screams, “I’ve thought ahead.” You’re prepared. You’re considerate. I just know you’ve never accidentally had onion breath in an important meeting.

-People who don’t depend on coffee, tea, or energy drinks to function. They wake up with nothing but water and good intentions and somehow make it through the day. I respect them deeply.

-People who still use wired earphones. I have absolutely no explanation for this one. They just have an aura. It feels like they opted out of unnecessary upgrades and I respect the commitment.

-Women with really short hair. Every time I see a girl confidently rocking a bob or a pixie cut, I think, “You must be so comfortable being yourself.” And I’m out here getting face-framing layers for emotional stability.

-People who are always on time. Somewhere along the way, being late became quirky and punctuality became uncool. I disagree. Showing up when you said you would is one of the most underrated ways of respecting another person’s time. I notice it every single time.

-People who cook. Just people who can come home, look inside the fridge and make themselves dinner. There’s something deeply attractive about knowing how to take care of yourself without relying on an app/another person every night. It’s one of the most basic life skills, yet somehow it feels like a superpower.

I feel like being cool is less about confidence, and more about curiosity and kindness.

Or maybe I’m just incredibly easy to impress..

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I’ve noticed a thing about myself that I’m still not sure is a strength or a flaw.

I don’t know how to completely close the door on people. I might stop talking to you and decide that we’re no longer good for each other. I might even accept that you’re no longer meant to be part of my life. But if you called me one day and genuinely needed help, I’d probably still pick up, no matter what conspired between us.

For the longest time, I thought this meant I wasn’t good at setting boundaries.

Now I’m not so sure. I think I’m just very loyal to the memories people gave me.

Once someone has occupied a meaningful chapter of my life, I find it almost impossible to rewrite them as the villain. I just can’t remember people by the way they left. Instead, my brain insists on remembering them by the moments that made me let them in to begin with. The version of me that existed because they were around: those things don’t suddenly become untrue because the ending was disappointing.

Maybe that’s why I rarely stay angry for very long.

My first instinct is almost never, How could they do that?

It’s usually, I wonder what happened to them.

I find this very inconvenient. Because sometimes people really do hurt you. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is let someone become a stranger again. I’m still learning that. I’ve always loved people a little too quickly, I become fascinated by them. I want to know which stories they tell every time they’re with friends or what songs they like listening to. I start collecting pieces of them until they begin to feel familiar.

And once someone feels familiar or important, my heart grants them space for more time that it should.

Even after they’ve left or disappointed me.

Even after we’ve both become people the other no longer recognizes.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m not actually attached to the person anymore. I’m attached to the museum I’ve built around them. A place where all the good moments are carefully preserved behind glass. Where I can still visit the version of them that made me feel safe, understood, or seen.

Museums are beautiful. They’re also terrible places to expect people to keep living. The hardest lesson adulthood keeps teaching me is that people aren’t static. The person who hurt you can exist in the same body as the person who once made you feel deeply cared for. Both versions can be true.

This might also be why I find it so difficult to hate people. Hate asks me to erase every good thing they ever were. Love asks me to ignore every painful thing they became. Neither feels honest. So I’ve been trying to make room for something in between: a place where I can appreciate what someone meant to me without needing them to remain in my life.

I can miss a chapter without trying to reopen the book. I don’t think every door needs to stay open. But I also don’t think every meaningful relationship deserves to be remembered only by the way it ended. Some people are simply chapters: beautiful necessary and complicated.

And the kindest thing we can do, for them and for ourselves, is leave them exactly where they belong. In the story.

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I don’t think there’s a place in the world that holds more emotion per square foot than an airport, think about it (hospitals may be a close second, but you get my point).

Either ways, imagine it’s 4 am, you’re standing in a security line holding a tray with your laptop, belt, watch, and whatever dignity you had left after waking up at an ungodly hour. You’re exhausted and slightly annoyed. Wondering why airports require so much administrative commitment just to let you leave.

And still, nobody really complains.

Because on the other side of all this inconvenience is possibility.

Airports ask so much of you before giving you anything in return. Wake up before sunrise, carry your life in a suitcase, stand in long queues and have strangers scan your belongings. Rush to a gate that somehow always feels far away. None of it is enjoyable, but you’re willing to do it every single time.

Because you’re going somewhere.

I’ve always found it impossible to feel just one emotion at an airport. You’re tired, but excited. Nervous, but hopeful.

You’re either counting down to a trip you’ve dreamed about for months, or grieving the fact that it’s already over. You’re saying hello to someone you’ve missed for years, or hugging someone goodbye without knowing exactly when you’ll see them again. Even happiness feels a little sad there.

Returning home after an incredible trip comes with this ache. You spend days looking forward to a holiday, and before you know it, you’re standing at baggage claim wondering where the time went. At the same time, someone a few gates away is about to experience that exact holiday for the first time. Their excitement is just beginning while yours is ending. The same airport is holding both stories at once.

An airport is one of the few places where everyone’s life is moving, but never in the same direction. Someone is flying home because they miss their family…or leaving home because they need distance from it. Someone is boarding a flight for their honeymoon or flying back after signing divorce papers.

People could even be carrying ashes on their flight.

Someone just got the job they’ve wanted their entire life…or just lost theirs.

You walk past hundreds of people, and every single one is in the middle of a story you’ll never know.

I feel like airports feel emotionally heavier than train stations or bus stops. Nobody accidentally ends up at an airport. People arrive there because something is changing. A chapter is ending, beginning, or pausing. It’s a building full of people existing between versions of themselves.

Time is just a concept there: Breakfast at midnight. Coffee at 5 a.m. Dinner somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Sleeping while the sun is out. Landing on a different day than the one you left. Your body has no idea what it’s supposed to be feeling anymore. Neither does your heart.

Airports suspend reality. For a few hours, your entire job is simply to get from one life to another.

Strangers feel weirdly familiar here. You smile at someone struggling to fit their bag into the overhead compartment. You make eye contact with someone who’s clearly just cried after saying goodbye or watch a child sprint toward arriving passengers before their parents can stop them. You overhear someone speaking to their mother on the phone, promising they’ve landed safely. Tiny reminders that everyone is carrying something.

Airports have become museums of transition. I always leave an airport feeling more emotional than I expected. Not because of the journey, but because for a few hours I get to witness thousands of lives changing direction at exactly the same time. All of that hope, anticipation, grief, excitement, homesickness, and possibility exists under one roof.

I’ve never been able to think of another place that does that.

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There was a time, where tomorrow felt like a wrapped gift.
I would fall asleep impatiently,
because a new day was waiting for me.

Morning arrived carrying possibility
instead of responsibility.
The future felt less like a mountain to climb
and more like a field to run through.

Back then,
the world seemed impossibly generous.
Nothing needed to be useful
to be worth loving.

The hours stretched endlessly,
soft around the edges,
not concerned with productivity.

A summer afternoon felt infinite.
A school trip could sustain excitement for weeks.

Wonder lived everywhere.

In ants carrying leaves
or clouds shaped like dragons.
In the possibility that adulthood
might be the most exciting thing imaginable.

And perhaps the most beautiful part of it all
was how light everything felt on our shoulders.
Mistakes were small enough to survive.
The world forgave us quickly.
Nothing followed us home for years
or demanded a lesson immediately.

There was always another chance waiting around the corner.

Back then, belief came naturally.
Without any proof,
I was convinced I could become a singer,
an astronaut,
a writer,
or a scientist.

Nobody asked whether it was realistic.
The horizon existed solely
to be chased.

And people felt different too. 
Strangers were simply friends
who hadn’t been introduced yet.

Trust arrived before suspicion.
The world hadn’t yet taught us
to search for hidden motives,
to read between lines,
or wonder whether we were being judged.

But year after year, the days became shorter,
despite having the same number of hours.
Wonder started making room for caution.

The future,
once so inviting,
began introducing itself
through deadlines,
targets,
performance reviews,
monthly goals,
five-year plans.

Possibility now came with terms and conditions.

Somewhere along the way,
we learned to calculate. 
Measure risk.
Anticipate disappointment.
Prepare ourselves
for outcomes that hadn’t happened.

And while those lessons made us wiser,
they also made things heavier.

I don’t miss childhood because it was perfect.
It wasn’t.
But even sadness felt temporary.
Like weather.

It arrived,
it stayed for a while,
and then something interesting happened
that pulled your attention elsewhere.

The world always seemed ready
to offer another beginning.

That's what I miss most.
The certainty that life was waiting for me
with open arms,
that something exciting
was just ahead.

Every now and then,
when I catch myself becoming too practical,
too cautious,
too concerned with getting things right,

I think about the child
who couldn’t wait for morning.

The one who looked at the horizon
and saw adventure instead of uncertainty.

The one who believed
that the world was enormous,
that people were mostly good,
and that almost anything was possible.

I don’t think she was naive.

I think she understood something
I’ve spent years trying to relearn:

that life becomes a lot more beautiful
when possibility outweighs fear.

There are people I cared deeply about, conversations I know changed me, and entire chapters of my life that I can barely remember.

These chapters didn’t even happen years ago. Some of them are surprisingly recent. I know I lived through every moment of them. But when I try to revisit those memories, it’s like reaching for a photograph that’s been left out in the sun for too long. The outlines are there, but the details have faded.

And what’s strange is that I don’t think it happened by accident.

Shouldn’t I remember? Shouldn’t I be able to replay the conversations, the moments, the inside jokes, the random Tuesday afternoons that once felt important?

I’ve come to realise that my brain wasn’t failing me, it was protecting me.

I’ve always had a difficult relationship with nostalgia. When I remember something beautiful, I don’t just remember it. I sit in it and dissect it. I wonder how things could have unfolded differently. A good memory rarely stays a memory, it turns into a place I want to return to. That’s probably where the trouble begins.

You can’t move forward while constantly trying to move backward. That’s why, after certain relationships ended, I didn’t just lose the person. I lost access to the memories too. It’s also never intentional. I never decided to forget, but somehow the little details became harder to access. It’s as though my brain locks the door and hides the key.

Funnily enough, this isn’t because those moments were painful, but because they weren’t. They were beautiful. And beauty can be just as difficult to let go of as pain.

Psychologists often talk about memory as a reconstruction rather than a recording. The brain doesn’t store experiences like files in a cabinet waiting to be retrieved perfectly years later. Instead, memory is shaped by emotion, attention, stress, and survival. Research also shows that periods of emotional overwhelm can make memories harder to encode and retrieve. When we’re adapting to heartbreak, grief, uncertainty, or significant change, the brain often prioritizes coping over documentation.

What’s particularly interesting is that this doesn’t only apply to painful memories. The brain can create distance from positive memories too, especially when those memories become tangled up with loss. Because remembering the beautiful parts often means reopening the wound attached to them.

But it’s cool how the brain fails to block out how those memories feel. I remember feeling safe, understood, excited and hopeful; Ask me for the exact conversations, the dates, the sequence of events, and the memories begin to dissolve. Part of me is grateful for that. There are experiences I would’ve struggled to leave behind if every beautiful moment remained easily accessible. There are people I would’ve continued romanticizing. There are chapters I would’ve reread endlessly instead of finishing. Forgetting helped me move forward.

But at the same time, some moments were genuinely beautiful, regardless of how they ended. Healing, it turns out, isn’t always selective. Sometimes the same mechanism that protects us also erases things we’d rather keep. The brain isn’t concerned with preserving a perfect archive of your life. Its priority is getting you through it. That’s why certain chapters feel inaccessible now. Not lost, just stored somewhere beyond immediate reach.

I can remember exactly how certain people and moments made me feel though. And that makes it all okay..

I always come on here and write about how my brain works in hopes that someone can resonate with it, and this is just another thing I’ve noticed. I would love to discuss more about this phenomenon in the comments, feel free to let me know what you think and if you have experienced this too!

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It all started when I was in 6th grade. I had my first fully formed pimple. I can never forget that day.

I was the kind of kid that sat somewhere in the middle rows of my classroom. I was friends with the backbenchers, but still on good terms with the front-bencher-teacher’s pets. I knew how to blend into every group, and that really helped me stay out of trouble while also allowing myself to be the rebel that I am. One day, a giant pimple appeared right in the middle of my nose.

A boy sitting ahead of me looked back and said,
“Bro what’s that on your nose? Did you get hurt?”

At that age, you don’t even know what acne is. You think pimples are random injuries that appear overnight and disappear just as quickly. Nobody teaches you about hormones or inflammation or chronic skin conditions when you’re 11.

So I just awkwardly laughed and said,
“Ya… I think I got hurt. It’ll go soon.”

Looking back, that moment feels important to me because why did I feel the need to justify something that was happening on my face? Why did I immediately feel responsible for making other people comfortable about something that affects them in no way? I think that was the day acne started influencing the way my brain worked. From 6th to 10th grade, it was mild. A few pimples here and there. Nothing severe. But enough to notice. Enough to compare myself to girls with perfectly clear skin and wonder why mine never looked like that. Typical teenage girl behaviour, I guess.

Then came 11th grade.

My first real flare-up.

Five or six big active pimples in the middle section of my face felt catastrophic to me back then. I was angry and confused because I genuinely believed I had “done everything right.” I ate homecooked food, drank enough water, barely had junk food compared to most people my age.

One thing about acne, it humbles your belief that control equals results. This is when I had my first dermatologist visit. He put me on medication that I stayed on for almost six months. And for the first time in my life, I experienced genuinely clear skin. I cannot even explain how euphoric that felt.

People who have naturally clear skin don’t realize what a privilege it is to wake up and not immediately inspect your face in the mirror. To not mentally calculate how noticeable a spot looks in sunlight. To not wonder whether people are looking at you or your skin first. For those few months, I stopped thinking about my face all the time. But the thing about acne is that it teaches you very quickly that healing is rarely linear.

About one and a half years after slowly weaning off the medication, the acne returned.

Not as aggressively, but enough to upset me because it felt unfair. I hated that the treatment only seemed effective while I was actively on it. It made me realize acne wasn’t some temporary inconvenience I could just “fix” once and move on from forever. By second year of degree college, pimples had honestly become normal to me. I was so used to them that they stopped feeling shocking. And thankfully, I was surrounded by people who never made me feel less beautiful because of my skin. That part matters more than we realize.

And then my final year of college.
The worst flare-up I had ever experienced.

This time it spread across my cheeks. Angry, inflamed acne that left behind marks.

I remember genuinely asking myself:
“What did I do to deserve skin like this?”

Which sounds dramatic until you’ve experienced something that changes the way you perceive your own face every single day. That flare-up affected me mentally more than physically. I started an Ayurvedic treatment during that time. Bitter syrups. Multiple pills. Strict diets. Months of consistency with barely any visible results.

So I quit.

Not because Ayurveda was ineffective, but because I was exhausted. I was impatient. I wanted fast results, without being put through so many restrictions. I wanted to wake up and feel normal again. I wanted to stop covering things up. I wanted my skin to stop feeling like the first thing people noticed about me.

But acne doesn’t work according to urgency. Especially hormonal acne. It has its own timeline.

And through all of this came the comments. The aunties at family functions. The relatives staring a little too hard before asking,
“Kya hua hai idhar?”
“Are you okay?”
“Isko theek kar na.”

As if my face was some public issue that needed immediate solving.

And my favourite one:
“Drink more water.”

Thank you. Revolutionary information.

People think acne is only physical. They think it begins and ends with skincare, food, water, or hygiene. But the hardest part about acne is rarely the acne itself. It’s what it does to your mind. It changes the way you think, especially if you’ve had it for most of your life.

It’s looking at yourself before every social event and mentally checking whether your skin looks “acceptable” that day. It’s the exhaustion of feeling perceived all the time. It’s hearing people point it out as if you somehow forgot it was there. And what people don’t understand is: someone with acne already knows they have acne. They see it every morning. Every mirror. Every front camera. You do not need to remind them.

Acne is normal.
Human skin is textured.
Inflammation is normal.

Society has made acne feel like a moral failure instead of a medical condition. For me it started at 11 and I am now 23, which is more than half my life.

But with time and acceptance, somewhere in my journey, something has shifted.

I’ve stopped waiting to feel pretty only on “good skin days.” Now I wear my acne outside openly. I go out during flare-ups. I take pictures anyway. And if someone comments on it, I usually laugh and say, “Yes andd what? I think I look cute” And they genuinely don’t know what to say after that. It feels very powerful. Because the moment you stop acting ashamed, people lose the power to weaponize your insecurity. That doesn’t mean I suddenly stopped caring about my skin. I still want healthy glowing skin, I’ll probably try future treatments too. But now it comes from a place of care, not hatred.

I think that’s the biggest thing acne taught me: you still deserve softness from yourself while you are healing. You deserve to care for your skin in every phase of it, not just when it looks the way you want it to. Because for years, I treated clear skin like a finish line. I told myself I’d feel more confident when the acne went away. I’d take more pictures when the scars faded. I’d feel prettier when my skin behaved. I’d stop overthinking when my face looked “better.” But I soon came to realize how much life I was postponing for a version of myself that didn’t exist yet.

The truth is, confidence doesn’t arrive when your skin clears. If that were the case, every person with perfect skin would love themselves completely. Confidence arrives when you stop negotiating your worth with your reflection.

So yes, I still want healthy skin. But acne no longer gets to decide whether I deserve to feel beautiful that day, because at the end of the day, acne is something I experience. It is not who I am.

And honestly?

Hot girls have acne.

They also have scars, texture, inflammation, bad & good skin days. And I think younger me, the girl with the giant pimple on her nose who felt the need to explain herself to everyone around her, deserved to know that much sooner.

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Do you believe in soulmates?

I’m not talking about the person you feel like things work with, or you’re compatible with. I mean the one that feels a little irrational to even consider. Like somewhere out there, someone exists who was always meant to cross your path. I know it sounds unrealistic when you say it out loud. It’s not really how we think anymore. We’ve gotten used to explaining everything: timing, effort, shared values. Love has become something we understand, not something we believe in blindly.

But still, I can’t help thinking about how strange it is that we meet the people we meet at the exact moments we do. How one small decision: showing up somewhere you almost cancelled, replying to a message you almost ignored, being in the right place at a random time: can lead you to someone who changes you.

And you don’t even realise it then. What if that’s how it works? It could be some almost forgettable choices that slowly bring two lives closer without them even noticing.

And then one day, it clicks. Or maybe it doesn’t.

But what’s unsettling is that: what if you’ve already met someone who was meant to be important, and you didn’t recognise it? What if they were just… another person at the time?

I often think about how easy it is to miss something that could’ve meant everything, just because you weren’t ready or weren’t paying attention.

But I also don’t think soulmates have to mean forever.

Maybe they’re just people who leave something permanent in you. Romantic or not. Someone who understands you without you having to overexplain, who feels familiar in a way you can’t really justify. Someone who fits into your life in a way that feels… intentional. I like believing that exists. Even if I never get to prove it or never meet them.

Just the idea that someone out there could be aligned with you in that way, it makes everything feel a little less random. In the middle of all this unpredictability, there’s something quietly working in your favour. Someone whose path might cross yours in a way that feels almost too precise to be accidental.

Just the belief that some connections aren’t just coincidence, they find you when they’re meant to…:’)

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What even are our opinions anymore?

Sometimes I look around and realize we’re all consuming the same things, dressing similarly, speaking in the same internet language and wanting the same routines. You walk into a workout class and half the room is wearing the same trendy activewear brand and carrying identical water bottles. Same matcha orders afterwards.

And it’s not even a bad thing. It’s just interesting.

We’ve reached a point where standing out actually takes effort now, so naturally we absorb parts of each other constantly, without even realizing it. And I think somewhere in all this noise, a lot of us stopped questioning whether the things we like are genuinely ours or simply things we’ve seen repeated around us long enough to feel familiar. The points below are me just trying to dissect my thoughts to understand why this happens..

-Familiarity starts feeling like personality

I think the internet has changed the way we form personalities. Lately, I’ve caught myself looking back at certain phases of my life and realizing I didn’t actually like some of the things I thought I liked. I just saw them so often that they started feeling like me. And I know I’m not the only one. Sometimes we absorb things for so long that familiarity starts disguising itself as personality.

-We confuse aspiration with identity

I think one of the biggest reasons this happens is because we don’t always want the thing itself. We want what it represents. We want to be perceived as disciplined, creative, intelligent, well-read, successful and self-aware; so we slowly start collecting interests that support that version of ourselves. I don’t even think it’s intentional.

-The internet rewards sameness while selling individuality

There were songs I convinced myself I liked because everyone online treated them like masterpieces. Trends I maybe participated in because not participating made me feel left out of some shared internet experience. And at the time, it genuinely felt real. Until later, when I stepped away from it and thought:

Wait… did I even like that? Or did I just like feeling included?

It is because the internet has made everyone obsessed with individuality while slowly making us all similar at the same time. And because it happens gradually, it feels natural.

-We barely spend time alone with our own thoughts

I think what scares me most is how little silence we have now. Every empty moment gets filled immediately: music, podcasts, reels, notifications, someone else’s thoughts. I wrote more about this in a separate article, if you want to understand what I mean:

We barely sit with ourselves long enough to know what naturally interests us anymore. And when your brain is constantly consuming, it slowly loses space to independently create.

-Boredom used to shape personality

Before algorithms told us what to wear, watch, listen to, and become, people discovered themselves more slowly. Interests developed accidentally through boredom. Now everything arrives pre-packaged, and after enough exposure, you stop questioning whether you actually agree.

What’s important to understand now is: The things that are truly yours usually survive silence.

Humans are very easily influenceable and the internet has become our biggest environment. The solution probably isn’t disappearing/going offline completely. I think it’s just creating more space to hear your own thoughts again. I think we’ve forgotten how important boredom is. It’s usually in those moments that your real preferences start showing up.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself: “Would I still like this if nobody saw me liking it?”

This question clears up a lot for me.

Because the things that are truly yours usually survive silence, trends, validation and not being seen.

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I had a beautiful childhood, I really did.

My parents created an environment where I could be myself and explore what I liked. I was constantly surrounded by curious kids like me. I was in rooms where creativity wasn’t mocked. I was allowed to think freely and become my own person. And I know how lucky that is.

I’ll never fully be able to thank them for the years they sacrificed, the effort they put in, or the life they tried to build for us with the knowledge they had.

But I also feel that at some point, the people who raised you stop feeling invincible.

I think one of the strangest parts of growing up is realizing your parents are also just… people.

When you’re younger, your parents feel like they know everything: how the world works, what’s safe, what’s right and what’s best for you. You see them as fully formed people. In your eyes they are stable and wise. And then one day, you start seeing the gaps. Not flaws, just humanity. You notice your parents getting older and asking you how to do small things like order something online, resetting a password or how to check if a message is fake. And that’s when the dynamic shifts a little.

The other day, my father had ordered something through a random Facebook ad (first mistake already). The product that arrived looked nothing like the pictures, obviously. Half broken. Completely useless. And instead of getting angry, I found myself teaching him how to ask for a refund through the website, what screenshots to attach, and why he shouldn’t trust every ad he sees online.

And while doing that, I had the realization that there was once a time he taught me how to hold a spoon. And now I’m teaching him how to avoid getting scammed on the internet.

I think growing up is a constant exchange of roles like that. And I think accepting your parents as humans changes your relationship with them completely. Because once you stop expecting perfection from them, you start understanding them better too. You understand why they reacted certain ways. Why they were strict about some things, why they feared certain choices and why they carried certain habits into parenting. You start seeing the generation before you: the environment they grew up in, things they never got to heal from and the things nobody taught them.

And you also start realizing how much they built from almost nothing, how they created stability before they could even fully experience it for themselves. How they gave us opportunities they never had and stretched themselves emotionally, financially, mentally, just to make life softer for us than it was for them. They built entire lives from scratch while still figuring out their own. And I think we forget how difficult that must have been.

I have also realised that giving your parents grace also gives you peace.

Because resentment becomes heavier to carry once you realize most people are simply trying their best with what they know. That doesn’t mean every hurt disappears or that harmful patterns should just be excused. I think part of growing up is also recognizing what you don’t want to carry forward.

The unlearning.

But I think both things can exist together.

You can deeply love your parents and still choose differently for yourself. You can appreciate your upbringing while also acknowledging the parts that shaped you in difficult ways.

Another strange aspect of adulthood is realizing your parents can shape you deeply but only until a certain point. After that, it becomes your responsibility. Your healing, choices and mindset. Your patterns to continue or break.

And I think that’s why adulthood softens you towards your parents. Because eventually, you stop seeing them only as ‘mumma’ and ‘papa’. You start seeing the younger versions of them too. The versions that were also confused, also trying, also doing life for the first time.

We spend so much of childhood romanticising our parents into superheroes. And then adulthood introduces us to their humanity. And I think loving them even more after realizing that is the best part<3

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Why does rejection always feel so personal?

A delayed reply feels like a statement about your worth. A job rejection email feels like a verdict on your abilities. Someone choosing someone else can feel like proof that you were not enough. Even when logic tells us otherwise, rejection has a way of slipping past reason and landing directly in our identity. That’s what makes it so powerful. It rarely just feels like no. It feels like not you.

And yet, rejection is one of the most universal human experiences there is. Nearly everyone has felt it in some form: socially, professionally, romantically, creatively. Research in social neuroscience has shown that rejection activates some of the same brain regions associated with physical pain. In simple terms: your brain often treats social rejection like an actual injury. No wonder it hurts more than it “should.”

Another study found that people tend to overestimate how negatively others evaluate them after setbacks. We assume one rejection means everyone sees our flaws as clearly as we do in that moment. Most of the time, they don’t. Most people are too busy dealing with their own fears, failures, deadlines, and insecurities to think about ours for very long.

Still, when it happens, it stings.

Because rejection often awakens older wounds. It taps into childhood fears of being left out, being chosen last, being unseen, being replaceable. That’s why one unanswered message can feel bigger than one unanswered message. It carries history with it. But here’s what I’ve learned: rejection is not always a reflection. Sometimes it is simply a mismatch. Timing, priorities, circumstance, preference, capacity, alignment. So many things determine outcomes that have nothing to do with your worth.

The job market taught me this in the most humbling way. There were roles I felt perfect for. Roles I knew I could do well. Roles where I had convinced myself the outcome was obvious. And then came the polite emails, the silence, the “we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates.” At first, every rejection felt deeply personal. I questioned my skills, my experience, my value. I compared myself to strangers who had “made it.” I wondered what they had that I didn’t.

But eventually, after enough no’s, I stopped seeing rejection as evidence that I was lacking, and started seeing it as information. Some roles weren’t right. Some environments would not have suited me. Some opportunities only looked shiny because I was craving movement. And then I landed where I was meant to be. The place that fit. The place that made sense in hindsight. The place where my skills were valued in the right way. Suddenly, the earlier rejections looked less like failures and more like redirections. Doors closing not to punish me, but to guide me elsewhere.

We rarely understand rejection in real time. It usually becomes clear in retrospect. The same is true in relationships.

Romantic rejection can feel especially brutal because love makes us vulnerable. When someone doesn’t choose us, it can feel like they rejected our deepest version. But often, they are rejecting compatibility, readiness, emotional capacity, or the version of love they are capable of giving, not your worthiness of being loved. And let’s be honest: someone who does not value your time, your effort, your softness, your loyalty, your presence, does not deserve access to those things. Someone who mishandles your love is not proof that your love lacks value. It is proof they lacked the ability to hold it well. We often grieve people who could not appreciate us as if that means we were not valuable. It doesn’t.

Not everyone will choose you. Not every company will hire you. Not every person will love you back. Not every room will recognize what you bring. This is normal. It is human. It happens to all of us.

What matters is learning not to convert rejection into self-hatred. Feel disappointed, yes. Feel sad, embarrassed, frustrated, angry even. Those emotions are natural. But do not make rejection your identity. It is an event, not a definition. A moment, not a measure. Sometimes rejection protects you from places where you would have shrunk. Sometimes it delays you until you’re ready. Sometimes it clears space for something better aligned. Sometimes it simply teaches resilience. And sometimes, years later, you’ll thank the thing that once broke your confidence.

Because the truth is, many of the best things in life arrive after a series of no’s.

Rejection is painful. But it is also ordinary. It is survivable. And very often, it is how life reroutes you toward what was actually yours.

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The other day, I was watching a reel of a stranger getting proposed to. I didn’t know her. I’ll never meet her. There is absolutely no reason for me to be emotionally invested in her life. And yet, there I was, tearing up like this was a personal milestone.

It’s a little embarrassing how often this happens.

Like hysterically sobbing at weddings where I barely know the bride. Feeling a strange heaviness watching an old man struggle to cross the road, as if I’ve suddenly lived his entire life in that one moment. Walking past someone asking for help and carrying that interaction longer than I need to, even if I don’t stop. It’s never just what’s happening in front of me, it’s everything around it.

The backstory I create, the emotions I imagine and the meaning I attach.

And it doesn’t switch off.

Even in situations where I probably should just feel annoyed or upset. If someone does something that hurts me, my first instinct isn’t anger. It’s analysis. I start filling in the gaps for them before they even have to. Maybe they didn’t mean it like that. Maybe they’re having a bad day. Maybe they just don’t know how to show up better. By the time I’ve thought it through, I’ve already forgiven them. Not because I’ve processed it. Just because I’ve understood it.

And there’s a difference.

I think that’s what being an empath feels like for me. It’s not just feeling deeply, it’s feeling beyond what’s given. It’s never taking things at face value. It’s constantly reading between lines that may or may not even exist. It’s making space for everyone else’s perspective, sometimes before making space for your own. Maybe it’s also the Pisces in me: we are always described as emotional sponges, intuitive, sensitive, the kind of people who can feel the energy in a room before a word is spoken.

There are moments where it feels like a gift. Like being able to connect to people and situations in a way that feels almost instinctive. Like understanding without needing things to be explained. Like finding softness in places where others might just move on. But there are also moments where it feels… excessive. Like laughing at something and then immediately wondering if someone else didn’t find it funny. Like sitting in a room and being aware of everyone’s mood at once. Like absorbing things that were never yours to carry. It’s quiet, but constant.

And the strangest part is how normal it feels. Until you realise not everyone operates like this. Not everyone is mentally building entire emotional landscapes out of small, everyday moments. Not everyone is softening people’s actions in their head before reacting to them. And that’s when it hits you: maybe you’ve been understanding more than necessary and that not everything needs a backstory, not everything needs to be justified and felt this deeply.

But I don’t think I’d want to turn it off, even if I could, because there’s something undeniably beautiful about it. About feeling connected to moments that aren’t yours. About finding meaning in ordinary things. About caring in a way that isn’t calculated. It just needs… balance, because understanding everyone else shouldn’t come at the cost of understanding yourself. And I think I’m still learning where that line is.

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I remember sitting across him thinking he’s nice.

He listened when I spoke. He didn’t interrupt. Yet, something didn’t sit right. Not enough to argue about or to leave over. Just enough to stay with me.

It was in the way he laughed at a joke he didn’t agree with, but didn’t question. In the way he expected me to explain things that he could’ve taken the time to understand himself. Small things, always small things. The kind you start convincing yourself don’t matter. And that’s how it begins, I think. Not with something you can clearly name. But with something you slowly start adjusting to.

And I’ve realised: it’s not always about a person being “wrong.” It’s just about how much there is to consider now.

There’s a version of relationships (romantic or platonic) that I grew up believing in. Where liking someone, getting along, and feeling good around them was enough. Where connection felt instinctive, not analytical. But that’s not how it feels anymore. Now, it’s not just about whether someone is kind. It’s about how they think. What they notice. What they question. What they let pass. It’s about how aware they are, not just of me, but of the world around them.

It’s not obvious incompatibility. It’s not something you can point at and say, “this is why it won’t work.” It’s just a quiet misalignment that you feel more than you can explain.

And then you’re left wondering:

am I overthinking this?
or am I finally paying attention?

I think we’ve reached a point where relationships aren’t just about connection anymore. They’re about awareness. About emotional depth, and also intellectual honesty. About whether someone is willing to look beyond themselves, or if they’re comfortable staying where they are. And the truth is, that narrows things down.

A lot.

Because it’s easy to be nice. It’s easy to say the right things. It’s easy to believe you’re doing enough. But it’s much harder to be intentional. To notice things without being told. To question your own perspective. To be open to unlearning, even when it’s uncomfortable. And I think that’s what I find myself looking for now. Not perfection (because I myself am imperfect in many ways, we all are) and not someone who gets everything right. But someone who is aware enough to try.

Someone who doesn’t treat conversations as corrections, but as growth. Someone who doesn’t default to “it’s not that deep,” but is willing to sit with depth, even when it’s inconvenient. Because the more you start noticing these things, the harder it becomes to ignore them. You can’t go back to simpler standards once you’ve seen what actually matters to you. And this makes love feel a little more complex than it used to be. I might even be wrong in overthinking this, but I’m just trying to protect my heart.

Cause it’s no longer just about how someone makes you feel, but about who they are when you’re not paying attention. And maybe love, for me now, isn’t just about connection. It’s about consciousness.

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I was in the middle of overthinking something small, but significant enough to take over my entire day.

And then, almost by accident, my brain drifted somewhere else. To space.

To the fact that right now, as I sit here replaying the same thought, there could be people preparing to leave Earth, again. I recently watched Project Hail Mary, and around the same time, read about Artemis II reaching the farthest point any human has ever gone. It’s crazy to think about the idea of going so far that “home” stops being a place and starts becoming a memory you carry. And far beyond that, stars are collapsing in on themselves. Entire systems are forming and dissolving without ever knowing we exist. I don’t know how to explain what happens next, but something shifts. My problem doesn’t disappear. It just… loses its grip.

I think I like my problems better when I’m thinking about space.

Whenever I do, they stop feeling like everything. We’re so used to experiencing life zoomed in. Everything is close-up. Every inconvenience feels personal, every uncertainty feels permanent. When you’re inside it, your world is the size of your thoughts. But space forces a different scale.

You zoom out a little: your room, your building, your city. Things already feel quieter. Zoom out more: your country, the curve of the Earth, the thinness of the atmosphere that holds everything you’ve ever known. And then further: the planet becomes a dot. Then not even that, just a coordinate in a system that itself is just one among billions.

There’s actually a name for this shift in perspective: the Overview Effect. Astronauts talk about it when they see Earth from space for the first time. The borders disappear, the noise fades, everything that once felt urgent suddenly looks smaller. Still real, but no longer overwhelming.

At some point, your problem tries to follow you. It stretches and insists on relevance. But it can’t keep up. Somewhere out there, none of this exists. Not your decisions. Not your timelines. Not the version of you that’s trying to get everything right. There are places in this universe where your entire life isn’t even a possibility, not even as an idea (I’m not trying to say you’re irrelevant… but aren’t we all?)

And strangely, that thought isn’t unsettling, it’s calming. Because it means the pressure we carry isn’t built into the fabric of existence. It’s something we’ve constructed up close, where everything feels immediate and important. Zoom out, and the urgency softens.

This isn’t about dismissing what you feel. Your problems are still yours. They still deserve attention, care, maybe even time. But they don’t deserve to feel like the center of the universe, because they’re not. And neither are you.

Which is the most comforting part. There’s a freedom in realizing you’re not holding everything together. That the world isn’t waiting on you to figure it all out. That things will continue: vastly, endlessly, regardless of whether you solve that one thing today. It takes the edge off. Makes room to breathe. The space doesn’t give us any answers or solutions, just proportion. A reminder that life isn’t meant to be lived entirely zoomed in.

Sometimes all it takes is the thought of how big everything is… to make your world feel manageable again.

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There’s a version of healing that exists online that I find slightly amusing.

It looks very put together. People journaling in soft lighting, drinking something green, talking about “choosing peace” like it’s a one-time decision you make and then just… stick to. It feels calm, linear, almost efficient.

I’ve never experienced healing like that.

A few weeks ago, I had one of those days where everything felt slightly off. Nothing major had gone wrong, but nothing felt right either. I dropped my favourite cup in the morning (completely my fault) and it shattered in a way that felt unnecessarily dramatic for 9am. I remember just standing there, staring at it, thinking: why does this feel worse than it should?

And that’s the thing about healing.

It’s never just about the thing in front of you.

It’s about everything that’s been sitting quietly underneath.

In fact, I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t healing from something. This thought used to bother me. It made me feel like I was constantly in recovery mode, like I was doing something wrong. But now I think maybe that’s just what life is: falling and recovering, over and over again. And what probably matters more is what that process makes of you.

Because real healing is not aesthetic.

It’s inconvenient, unpredictable, and honestly a little brutal at times. It doesn’t follow a timeline. You don’t wake up one day and decide you’re done. It comes in waves. One day you feel completely fine, like you’ve moved on, like you’ve grown past something. And then the next day, for no clear reason, you feel like you’re right back where you started.

And it can be about anything. Sometimes it’s healing from losing someone you thought you’d spend your life with. Sometimes it’s a missed opportunity you can’t stop replaying. And sometimes, it’s something as small as a cup breaking on a random morning and it pulling everything else up with it.

What’s changed for me though is how I respond to it.

I think after a certain point, healing becomes almost automatic. You’ve gone through it enough times to recognise the pattern. You know what helps, what doesn’t, when to sit with it and when to distract yourself. So even when something hurts, you don’t spiral the same way. You just acknowledge it and move through it.

It’s less dramatic, but more intentional.

And that’s the part I don’t see online.

The quiet, repetitive work of pulling yourself back together. The days where nothing feels resolved but you still show up for your life anyway. The moments where you don’t feel healed, but you trust that you will be, at some point. I think that’s what real healing looks like.

Not pretty, not linear, not something you can package into a routine, but something you live through, again and again, until it slowly changes you.

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How I met your mother

This show feels like life in its most honest form: messy, funny, confusing, and constantly in motion. It’s not just about figuring life out, it’s about how long it takes. Ted waiting years for something he’s convinced is meant for him. Robin choosing ambition even when it costs her love. Barney hiding behind jokes until he can’t anymore. Marshall and Lily trying to hold onto stability while everything else shifts.

It teaches you that life doesn’t move in a straight line. People outgrow each other, come back to each other, miss each other entirely. And the friendships: how central they feel, until they slowly aren’t. Apartments change, priorities change, people show up less and yet, when they sit together again, even briefly, it feels like no time has passed. That was the real thing. Not the big love story, not the ending ted was chasing, but the years he spent in that booth, laughing, waiting, becoming.

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Schitt’s creek

This one changes you in a quieter way. (The first season is slightly annoying to get through but once you do, it just keeps getting so undeniably exhilarating to watch)

David, who hides behind sarcasm and style, slowly learning to let himself be loved without conditions. Alexis, who starts off self-absorbed, finding independence and choosing growth over comfort. Johnny rebuilding from scratch, not his business: but his sense of purpose. Moira, still dramatic and eccentric, but deeply devoted in ways she never showed before.

It strips life down to its basics and shows you how much of what we chase is actually… replaceable. Luxury, status, image: none of it holds up when it’s taken away. But love? family? the people who choose you even when there’s nothing to gain? That’s what stays.

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When life gives you tangerines

This show lets life unfold slowly, beautifully, almost like you’re watching memories instead of scenes. It sits with moments: love, loss, growth, distance and lets you feel the weight of them. It shows you how every kind of relationship evolves over time. How it requires effort, patience, and sometimes… quiet endurance. Nothing is overdone, nothing is loud. It reminds you that beauty isn’t always in big events or dramatic turning points.

Not every relationship is easy, not every phase is kind, but there’s something deeply comforting in watching people navigate it anyway. It reminds you that life isn’t just about the highlights, it’s about everything in between.

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Kim’s convenience

This show feels simple on the surface, but it’s doing something deeper underneath. It’s about a family that loves each other, but doesn’t always know how to show it in the right ways.

Appa’s stubbornness, Umma’s softness, Janet’s need to be understood, Jung’s distance: none of it is dramatic, but all of it is familiar.

It captures that tension a lot of families have, between tradition and individuality, between expectation and acceptance. The love is there, always. It just doesn’t always come out perfectly, and that makes it feel more real than anything else.

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One day

This show feels like time slipping through your hands.

Emma is grounded, idealistic, trying to build something meaningful out of an ordinary life. Dexter is charming, impulsive, drifting through success without really holding onto anything. They meet at the same point, but grow at completely different paces. You watch them come in and out of each other’s lives, always connected, never fully aligned. It also depicts grief in a painfully beautiful manner.

It shows how life doesn’t wait for you to figure things out. How love can exist alongside distance, ego, and missed timing.

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The queen’s gambit

This one is as much about loneliness as it is about genius.

Beth’s talent is undeniable, but what you really watch is how isolating that kind of brilliance can be. How she turns to control: over the board, over her habits, because everything else feels unpredictable. The addiction, the self-sabotage, the moments where she almost loses herself completely, it’s not separate from her success, it runs alongside it.

And what makes it powerful is that she doesn’t just win because she’s gifted. She wins when she allows herself to not be alone in it anymore. When she learns that discipline isn’t just about pushing harder, it’s about choosing differently, about facing herself without running.

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Normal people

This one hurts in quiet, familiar ways. Connell is gentle, but unsure of himself, constantly shrinking, even in love. Marianne feels everything deeply, but doesn’t always believe she deserves to be loved well. And somewhere between his hesitation and her silence, they keep missing each other.

It taught me some silent lessons: 1) Love can be real, deep, and still not work out. 2) The way you see yourself shapes the way you let others love you. 3) That silence can ruin things just as much as mistakes can. 4) Timing isn’t just about when you meet someone, but who you are when you do. 5) Some connections don’t leave you, even when people do. And maybe the hardest one:

Almosts can stay with you just as much as forever.

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I think what all these shows have in common is this: They don’t simplify life. They let it be complicated, slow, sometimes unresolved. And in doing that, they make you feel a little less alone in your own in-between. They don’t give you answers, they just make you sit with better questions.

If you’ve watched any of these, I’d love to know what stayed with you.

And if you have more shows that quietly changed the way you think about life, tell me, I’m always looking for my next one!

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