There are some people who seem almost too alive to imagine the world without them. People who have such a particular light about them that, even if you never met them, they somehow feel familiar. Dolly Parton was one of those people. She had that rare quality of making you feel as though you knew her, even from a distance. Maybe it was the laugh, the stories, the songs, the impossible hair, the rhinestones, or simply the way she spoke about life with such warmth and mischief. She was never just a celebrity. She felt like a character who had wandered out of one of her own songs and decided to stick around.

And what a character she was. Dolly was a hoot and a holler. She was big hair and bigger personality, sequins, country songs, cheeky jokes and an almost endless supply of optimism. She never seemed interested in apologising for being too much. If the dress could sparkle more, it should. If the joke could be a little funnier, tell it. If the hair could be a little bigger, make it bigger. There was something incredibly joyful about the fact that Dolly Parton seemed to understand exactly who she was and had absolutely no intention of making herself smaller for anyone else.

But underneath all the glitter was a remarkable amount of substance. That is perhaps what makes her legacy so extraordinary to me. Dolly could make you laugh one minute and then quietly break your heart the next. She could write a song about heartbreak that somehow made millions of people feel understood, and then turn around and make a ridiculous joke about herself. She understood that you didn’t have to choose between being serious and being joyful. You could care deeply about the world and still have an enormous amount of fun in it.

And she cared deeply. One of the most beautiful parts of Dolly’s legacy is her generosity, particularly the Imagination Library. What began as a programme in her home community grew into something enormous: children receiving free books from birth until they begin school, regardless of their family’s income. Dolly was inspired in part by her father, who never had the opportunity to learn to read and write, and she wanted to give children something she believed could change the course of their lives: books and the freedom to imagine.

There is something almost unbearably lovely about that. Of all the things someone with Dolly’s success could give to the world, she chose to give children stories. She chose to put books into tiny hands and tell them, in a way, that there was a whole world waiting for them. That they could dream. That they could wonder. That their circumstances did not have to determine the size of their imagination.

And it wasn’t only books. Dolly gave to education, healthcare, disaster relief and communities. She invested in the places and people that mattered to her. She supported children and families and causes that could easily have gone unnoticed by someone living at her level of fame. There was something wonderfully consistent about her generosity. It wasn’t simply a publicity moment or a carefully crafted image. It seemed to be part of the way she understood success: if you have more than you need, you have the opportunity to give some of it away.

Perhaps that came from where she began. Dolly never seemed embarrassed about being from a poor family in rural Tennessee. She didn’t erase that part of herself when she became famous. She carried it with her. She built her career without pretending that she had always belonged to the world she eventually entered. She took her childhood, her accent, her family, her humour and her history and made them part of her story rather than something to hide.

And maybe that is another reason she was so beloved. She never seemed to believe that becoming successful meant becoming serious about yourself.

She was incredibly intelligent about her career. She was an exceptional songwriter, a businesswoman, an actress, an entertainer and a cultural force. She understood her own image better than almost anyone. She knew exactly what people saw when they looked at her, and she turned that image into something powerful. The blonde hair, the tiny waist, the enormous dresses and the rhinestones were part of the Dolly mythology, but they never told the whole story.

There was an incredibly sharp woman underneath all of it.

And I love that she didn’t feel the need to hide that intelligence behind modesty or seriousness. She could be clever and glamorous and ridiculous all at once. She could walk into a room looking like a human disco ball and then say something so perceptive that you wanted to write it down.

That is a rare kind of confidence: knowing you can be taken seriously without having to behave seriously all the time.

Dolly also had something I think we desperately need more of: an unapologetic relationship with joy. We live in a culture that can sometimes make cynicism feel intelligent. Everything is ironic. Everything is analysed. Being enthusiastic can feel embarrassing. Caring too much is something to hide behind a joke. Even happiness sometimes seems to require an explanation.

Dolly never seemed to have that problem.

She liked what she liked.

She loved music.

She loved beautiful things.

She loved telling stories.

She loved making people laugh.

She loved children reading.

She loved her home.

She loved her family.

She loved dressing up.

And she didn’t seem embarrassed by any of it.

Maybe that is part of the reason her passing feels so strange. Dolly Parton always seemed like one of those people who would simply continue. Someone who belonged to the category of people you couldn’t quite imagine becoming old because they had so much energy packed into them. She had a larger-than-life quality, but never in a way that felt inaccessible. If anything, she seemed to become more human the more successful she became.

There was always a little bit of mischief in her.

A wink.

A joke.

A laugh.

A reminder not to take yourself too seriously.

And perhaps that is what I will miss most. Not simply the music or the famous dresses or the larger-than-life Dolly image, but the feeling she gave people. The feeling that it was okay to be enthusiastic. It was okay to be feminine. It was okay to be ambitious. It was okay to be successful and generous. It was okay to laugh at yourself. It was okay to be a little bit ridiculous.

In fact, maybe being a little bit ridiculous is essential.

Dolly seemed to understand that a life doesn’t have to be restrained to be meaningful. You can have enormous dreams and still enjoy an afternoon telling jokes. You can build an empire and still care about the child receiving a book in the post. You can become famous around the world and still remember where you came from.

And perhaps the most Dolly thing of all is that she didn’t just tell people to dream. She gave them things that helped them dream.

A book.

A song.

A scholarship.

A place to learn.

A reason to laugh.

A reason to believe that their lives could be bigger than whatever circumstances they happened to be born into.

That is an extraordinary legacy.

So I don’t really want to remember Dolly as someone who simply became famous. I want to remember her as someone who made being alive look like something worth celebrating.

She was loud and sparkly and funny and ambitious and generous. She was complicated and clever and incredibly hardworking. She was a woman who refused to let the world convince her that she had to choose between beauty and brains, softness and strength, success and kindness.

She proved that you could be all of it.

And maybe that is the little piece of Dolly I want to carry forward.

To be a little less embarrassed by joy.

To give a little more.

To laugh a little louder.

To wear the ridiculous dress.

To read the book.

To dream something completely unreasonable.

To remember where you came from.

To help someone else get where they’re going.

And whenever life becomes a little too serious, perhaps to add a little more sparkle and a little more hoot and holler.

Because the world is a little quieter without Dolly Parton in it.

But it is also immeasurably brighter because she was here.

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If Zanzibar today is vibrant, colourful and constantly evolving, Bagamoyo feels like the Zanzibar my parents describe from decades ago, the one filled with bicycles, sandy streets and wooden dhows transporting just about everything along the coast. Before the beach clubs, before boutique hotels, before every beautiful doorway became someone’s photo backdrop. There is something wonderfully nostalgic about it. Not untouched exactly, and certainly not frozen in time, but moving according to a rhythm that seems largely uninterested in keeping up with the rest of the world.

The whole town reminds me of an elderly man sitting beneath an old mango tree. The kind of man who has lived a hundred stories and doesn’t feel the need to tell you all of them at once. He watches people come and go, smiles gently as they pass, perhaps exchanges a few words with someone walking by, and only begins speaking once you’ve sat down beside him for long enough. Bagamoyo is like that. It reveals itself slowly, one quiet street, one conversation and one afternoon at a time.

But beneath that sleepy surface is a history that is anything but quiet. Bagamoyo was once one of the most important ports on the Swahili coast, and for centuries its position on the Indian Ocean connected it to a much wider world. Traders moved between the African mainland, Zanzibar, Arabia and India, carrying goods, ideas, languages and religions with them. The town became particularly important in the nineteenth century as part of the caravan routes leading inland from the coast. Ivory and other goods passed through here, and Bagamoyo became a place where the ocean met the enormous interior of East Africa.

Its history is also marked by some of the darkest chapters of the region. Bagamoyo became deeply connected to the nineteenth-century slave trade, serving as a major departure point for enslaved people being transported towards Zanzibar and beyond. The name itself is often associated with the Swahili phrase Bwaga-Moyo, roughly translated as “lay down your heart” or “leave your heart,” a name that has acquired a particularly haunting resonance when you learn about the people who passed through here. Standing in the town today, it is difficult to reconcile the quietness of the streets with the scale of what they once witnessed.

Later came missionaries, explorers and European colonial powers. The Catholic mission at Bagamoyo became one of the earliest Catholic missions in East Africa, and the town was also an important base for European expeditions into the interior. German colonial rule left its own architectural imprint, most visibly in the old German Boma. Built during the period of German East Africa, the Boma served as an administrative building and still stands today as one of the most recognisable reminders of that period.

And yet, what I find so fascinating about Bagamoyo is that all of this history doesn’t seem to shout at you.

The old German Boma sits there almost quietly, its broad verandas and weathered walls exposed to the coastal air. It no longer houses the bustling administration it once did. There are no grand colonial officials arriving through the doors anymore, no papers being shuffled across desks, no machinery of the empire operating inside its rooms. Instead, there is the wind, the warmth and the sense of a building that has simply watched the world change around it. It feels less like a monument than an old witness.

That is perhaps the strange thing about historic places. We like to imagine history as something that happened somewhere else, in black-and-white photographs and dusty textbooks. But in Bagamoyo, it feels close enough to touch. You walk along an old street and realise that people walked here generations before you. You stand near the harbour and realise that the sea in front of you has been carrying people and goods across the Indian Ocean for centuries. The buildings aren’t simply old. They are reminders that the present is sitting directly on top of layers and layers of other lives.

If you’re curious about the town’s history, spend some time at the Catholic Historic Museum on the Holy Ghost Mission grounds. It gives you more context for what you’re seeing around the town, including the history of the early Catholic mission and the people who lived and worked here. I found that visiting the museum made the rest of Bagamoyo feel different. Suddenly the quiet streets weren’t simply charming old streets. They became part of a much longer story.

But despite all of this history, what stayed with me most wasn’t a particular date or building. It was everyday life.

One afternoon we stopped beside an elderly man selling cassava and sugar cane beneath the shade of a battered parasol. He sat there with the kind of stillness you only acquire after decades of doing the same things at your own pace. With slow, practised movements, he peeled the sugar cane with a knife that looked as though it had been in his hands for years. There was no rush. No queue growing impatient behind us. Nobody checking the time. We stood talking while he worked, watching the rhythm of someone who had probably repeated the same movements thousands of times before.

It felt like one of those moments you couldn’t have planned.

Travel often convinces us that the extraordinary lies in grand adventures. The safari, the mountain, the famous monument, the perfect viewpoint. Bagamoyo quietly argues the opposite. Sometimes the memory you take home is simply an old man preparing miwa on an ordinary afternoon.

And perhaps that is what I loved most about being there.

Every morning seemed to begin almost the same way. We would find ourselves wandering back to Nashe’s Café without even discussing it. It became less of a recommendation and more of a routine. Good food, fresh juices, coffee and drinks, and the sort of atmosphere that makes you order something else simply because you’re not ready to leave. We’d sit there while Bagamoyo slowly woke up around us, watching bicycles roll past, neighbours greeting each other across the street and people going about their mornings.

There was something comforting about having nowhere particularly important to be.

The funny thing was, Bagamoyo never really rewarded ambitious plans. The more we tried to decide exactly what we were going to do, the less necessary the plan seemed. The town rewarded wandering instead. Eventually, almost every road seemed to lead towards the sea.

At first, the beach feels almost sleepy. The Indian Ocean stretches quietly towards the horizon, fishermen sit repairing nets and children run through the sand. Wooden boats rest near the shore. There is something almost timeless about it. Then, sometime in the afternoon, the entire atmosphere begins to shift.

The beach becomes a harbour.

The old wooden dhows begin returning, their sails and weathered hulls carrying the evidence of another day’s work. Goods are moved from boat to shore. Fish, sacks of rice, vegetables, bicycles, containers and all manner of things seem to travel across the water and back onto land. Men carry heavy loads with the ease of people who have done it countless times. Children weave between the boats. Voices rise above the sound of the water. Ropes tighten. Engines cough into life. The smell of salt, fish and warm sand hangs in the air.

And suddenly the quiet beach has become a place of movement.

That is one of the things I remember most clearly: the contrast. Bagamoyo can be almost completely still one moment and full of life the next. The tide dictates the rhythm. The boats arrive when they arrive. The work begins when the boats arrive. There is no need to manufacture an experience for visitors because this is simply how the town works.

Standing there, watching the dhows move between the beach and the horizon, it feels almost impossible to know what year you’re in.

The boats don’t care about modernity.

The tide arrives when it always has.

The sea continues doing what it has done for centuries.

And somehow you’re lucky enough to stand there and watch.

There is also something important about remembering that Bagamoyo isn’t simply a museum of the past. It is a living town. Its history hasn’t stopped it from becoming something new. One afternoon we wandered towards TASUBA, the Bagamoyo College of Arts, and could hear music coming from the grounds before we could really see what was happening. Drums and voices drifted through the trees. Students were rehearsing music and dance, and the sound seemed to spill beyond the walls.

If you have the opportunity, ask whether you can visit. It is a lovely reminder that Bagamoyo isn’t simply preserving culture behind glass. It is still creating it.

The town’s artistic history is particularly fitting. Bagamoyo has long been associated with music, dance and theatre, and TASUBA continues that tradition by giving young artists a place to learn and create. It felt strangely moving to hear music coming from somewhere we hadn’t even intended to visit. Again, it was something you could only really discover by wandering.

And that, more than anything, became the theme of our time there.

Wandering.

For sunset, we would make our way to Empire Bay. It has a wonderful view over the beach, and the staff were genuinely lovely. There is nothing particularly complicated about it. You sit with a cold drink, watch the fishermen bring in the last boats of the day and wait for the sky to soften over the water. The colours change slowly. People linger. Nobody seems particularly interested in leaving.

There was nowhere else we needed to be. Perhaps that’s the greatest luxury Bagamoyo offers.

Not luxury in the conventional sense. Not marble bathrooms or infinity pools or perfectly designed interiors. Something much rarer: time.

Time to have another coffee. Time to sit beneath a tree. Time to talk to a stranger. Time to walk down a street without knowing where it ends. Time to watch a boat being unloaded. Time to listen to music coming from a college courtyard. Time to buy sugar cane from an old man who has probably sat in that same spot for years. Time to look at an old building and wonder about everyone who stood inside it before you.

Bagamoyo doesn’t demand that you see everything. In fact, I think it works better if you don’t try. Don’t rush through the historic sites and then leave. Don’t treat the town as a day-trip checklist.

Walk.

Sit.

Look.

Listen.

Have lunch at Nashe’s. Wander through the old streets. Visit the Catholic Historic Museum. See the German Boma. Ask about TASUBA. Go down to the beach in the afternoon when the dhows begin returning. Stop for sugar cane. Have a sunset drink at Empire Bay. And then, when you’ve done all of that, simply keep walking, and when you get tired return to Firefly Boutique Lodge for a good night’s rest.

Because the best part of Bagamoyo isn’t necessarily something you can put on a map.

It is the feeling of being somewhere that hasn’t entirely surrendered to speed.

There are places where you arrive and immediately start thinking about what comes next. In Bagamoyo, I found myself thinking much more about where I was.

Maybe that is why the image of the old man beneath the mango tree keeps coming back to me. He doesn’t seem to be waiting for anything. He isn’t rushing towards the next thing. He is simply there, watching the afternoon pass, surrounded by the sounds and smells of a town that has existed long before him and will continue long after.

Bagamoyo feels a little like that.

It has seen traders and missionaries, sailors and colonial officials, fishermen and artists, families and travellers. It has watched the coast change. It has carried difficult histories and beautiful ones. It has lost things and gained others. And still, somehow, it sits beneath the tropical sun and carries on.

Long after leaving, I realised I couldn’t remember exactly which day we visited each place. I couldn’t remember the precise order of the streets or what time we had arrived at the beach.

What I remembered was the feeling.

A town that had somehow escaped the rush. A place where history lives quietly in weathered walls and old wooden boats. A place where culture isn’t something you simply observe, but something you hear drifting through the streets. A place where the greatest luxury wasn’t five-star comfort or a perfectly planned itinerary.

It was time.

Time to wander.

Time to listen.

Time to sit beneath the mango tree.

Time to let the afternoon pass without needing it to become anything else.

And perhaps that is why Bagamoyo stays with you. It doesn’t try to impress you.

It simply gives you permission to slow down long enough to notice that you were there.

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Maybe that’s why I like it so much. You don’t have to compress your thoughts into a caption that people can understand in three seconds. You don’t have to find the perfect photograph before you’re allowed to say something. You don’t have to turn your life into a highlight reel. You can simply sit down and write. You can write about a book you loved, a place you travelled to, something that broke your heart, a strange thought you had on the tram, a conversation with a stranger, your feelings about spring, or absolutely nothing particularly important at all. And somehow, someone on the other side of the internet might read it and think, Oh. Me too.

That might be my favourite part: the feeling of recognition. On most social media, we’re constantly comparing. Someone is travelling somewhere more beautiful, looking more put together, having a more exciting career, getting engaged, buying an apartment, drinking a better-looking coffee. Even when we know intellectually that we’re looking at curated versions of people’s lives, comparison is almost impossible to escape. Substack feels much less like looking through someone’s window and much more like sitting across from them at a café. You don’t necessarily know what they look like. You might not know where they live. You just know that they had something to say, and for whatever reason, you wanted to listen.

There is something wonderfully intimate about that. A person somewhere in the world sits down and writes several thousand words about something they can’t stop thinking about, and you voluntarily read them. Not because an algorithm decided you needed to see it, but because you chose to. Maybe you found them through someone else. Maybe you searched for something you’re interested in. Maybe you stumbled across their writing at two in the morning. Either way, there is a strange little connection between two strangers who might never meet.

And I think that is what the internet was always meant to be.

A place where curiosity could lead you somewhere unexpected. A place where you could find people who were interested in the same obscure book, the same political question, the same city, the same kind of music, the same strange historical event, or the same existential crisis you thought nobody else was having. Somewhere along the way, social media became less about finding interesting people and more about performing yourself for everyone you already know.

Substack feels like a return to the former.

It rewards having something to say rather than simply having something to show. You can be funny without making a meme. You can be thoughtful without making a carousel of five beige slides. You can be vulnerable without turning it into a dramatic announcement. You can be knowledgeable without shouting into the void. You can be completely niche and somehow find an audience that is equally niche.

And perhaps most importantly, you can be long-winded.

As someone who likes to write, this feels revolutionary.

There is something liberating about not having to ask whether people will read something because it’s too long. Sometimes people want long. Sometimes they want to sit down with a cup of coffee and disappear into someone else’s thoughts for ten minutes. Sometimes we don’t need another thirty-second video. Sometimes we want the whole story.

I also love that Substack encourages people to be multifaceted. You don’t have to choose one identity and stick to it forever. You can write about literature on Monday, travel on Wednesday, relationships on Friday and a completely irrational thought about the smell of rain on Sunday. You can change your mind. You can become interested in something new. You can be inconsistent in the most human way possible.

Maybe that is another reason it feels healthier.

The rest of the internet constantly asks us to define ourselves. What is your niche? What is your aesthetic? Who is your audience? What kind of content do you make? What is your personal brand? Substack seems to quietly say: just write.

And there is something beautiful about that.

I also think there is something wonderfully old-fashioned about receiving someone’s writing in your inbox. It almost feels like having a modern pen pal. Someone you’ve never met sends you their thoughts, and you open them when you’re ready. There is no frantic need to respond immediately. No pressure to like something within the first five minutes. No expectation that you need to publicly perform your reaction. You can simply read.

Of course, Substack is still the internet. It isn’t some perfectly pure digital utopia. There are algorithms, trends, personalities, self-promotion and all the usual things that come with online spaces. But compared with the endless noise of traditional social media, it feels remarkably calm.

Maybe the internet isn’t actually healing.

Maybe we’re just finally building little corners of it where we can breathe.

And perhaps that’s what I love most about Substack: it feels like a place where people are still interested in each other.

Not just in how someone looks.

Not just in what someone bought.

Not just in where someone went on holiday.

But in what someone thinks.

There is something wonderfully hopeful about that. A person has an idea, and instead of keeping it in their head, they put it into the world. Someone else finds it. They read it. Maybe it changes their perspective by half a degree. Maybe it makes them laugh. Maybe it makes them feel less alone. Maybe they disagree completely. Maybe it sends them down an entirely different rabbit hole.

And suddenly, the internet becomes a conversation again.

That’s the kind of internet I want.

An internet full of people writing too much, reading too much, asking questions, changing their minds, recommending books, sharing stories, documenting ordinary lives and admitting that they don’t have everything figured out.

An internet where not everything has to go viral to matter.

An internet where a small audience can still be a real audience.

An internet where the best thing you can say after reading someone’s words is simply, I know exactly what you mean.

Maybe Substack isn’t superior because it has solved social media.

Maybe it’s superior because it has remembered something the rest of social media forgot:

We don’t always want to be entertained. Sometimes we just want to connect.

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But I don’t want to play that game anymore.

I don’t want to pretend I don’t care when I do. I don’t want to turn affection into a negotiation or measure someone’s interest by how long they take to reply. I don’t want to spend hours decoding a three-word message because apparently saying what you actually mean has become terrifying. And I certainly don’t want to believe that a man has to be emotionally unavailable to be masculine.

There is something incredibly attractive about a man who is comfortable with his own emotions. Someone who can say I missed you when I was only gone for three days, without immediately making a joke afterwards. Someone who gets me chocolate and flowers when I’m having a hard day. Someone who can tell you that they are happy to see you. Someone who can apologise without treating it like a defeat. Someone who wants to make me laugh because it makes him happy. Someone who can sit down after an argument and actually talk about what happened instead of disappearing, becoming defensive or pretending nothing happened.

I want someone who communicates.

Not perfectly. Nobody does. Healthy communication isn’t about never misunderstanding each other or never having difficult conversations. It’s about being willing to have them. It’s about being able to say, That hurt me, without turning it into a war. It’s about being able to hear, I need something from you, without immediately feeling attacked. It’s about asking questions instead of making assumptions and explaining instead of expecting someone to read your mind.

Maybe that sounds incredibly basic.

It is.

And yet, somehow, basic emotional maturity can feel almost revolutionary. I haven’t experienced it until now.

I don’t need grand declarations every morning or someone permanently attached to my hip. I have my own life, my own friends, my own ambitions and my own adventures. I don’t want to be someone’s entire world, and I don’t expect them to be mine. But I do want to feel chosen within that world. I want consistency. I want warmth. I want someone who doesn’t make me feel foolish for having feelings.

I want the kind of love that doesn’t require me to become smaller.

The kind where affection isn’t rationed because someone is afraid of seeming too interested. Where tenderness isn’t considered weakness. Where masculinity doesn’t depend on being the least emotionally invested person in the room.

Because there is nothing weak about loving openly.

There is nothing weak about knowing what you want.

There is nothing weak about telling someone you care about them.

In fact, I think it takes far more confidence to be emotionally honest than it does to hide behind indifference.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned in that way. I still like romance. I like someone being excited to see me. I like thoughtful messages and long conversations and someone remembering the little things. I like being asked how my day was and having someone actually listen to the answer. I like the idea that two people can be independent and still deeply devoted to one another.

And I refuse to believe that wanting those things makes me needy.

Maybe we have simply become too accustomed to being given too little.

So, in a world that keeps telling us to be chill, detached and impossible to impress, I think it’s perfectly okay to want someone who says what they feel. Someone who communicates. Someone who knows that vulnerability isn’t the opposite of strength.

Someone who doesn’t make love feel like a guessing game.

I don’t want to be loved quietly because someone is afraid of looking foolish.

I want to be loved honestly.

And I don’t think that’s asking for too much, because I am being loved in exactly that way.

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There is a quote from Dead Poets Society that has stayed with me for exactly that reason:

It sounds almost overly romantic when you first hear it, perhaps even a little dramatic. But the older I get (tbh not that old yet), the more I understand it. We need the things that keep the world functioning, absolutely. We need nurses and architects and scientists and teachers and engineers. We need people who can build bridges, perform surgeries, write laws and solve problems. But a life cannot be reduced to its functions. There has to be something underneath all of that: something that makes us stop, feel, wonder and care, something that makes all the hard work of living worth doing in the first place.

We spend an enormous amount of our lives being taught how to build a successful future. Get good grades. Go to university (god forbid anyone doesn’t go straight to uni). Find the right career. Work hard (until you’re in your late 60s). Be ambitious. Save money. Buy a home. Build a respectable life. Become someone your younger self can be proud of. None of these things are inherently bad. In fact, many of them are wonderful. There is something deeply satisfying about building a life for yourself and knowing that your hard work is creating something lasting. But sometimes I wonder if we’ve become so focused on making life function that we’ve forgotten to actually live it. What is the point of having a perfectly organised calendar if there is never anything in it that makes you excited? What is the point of working yourself into exhaustion for a future that you are too tired to enjoy when you eventually arrive there? What happens when being productive becomes the goal rather than the means to something greater?

Maybe this is why poetry matters, even to people who claim they don’t like poetry. And by poetry, I don’t necessarily mean sonnets or complicated verses or sitting beside a window writing about the moon and the stars. I mean anything that makes you feel something simply because you are human. A song that suddenly makes your chest ache. A book that changes the way you understand the world. A photograph that makes you stop scrolling. A conversation that lasts until three in the morning. The smell of rain after a hot summer day. The first warm day of spring when everyone suddenly spills out onto café terraces. The feeling of stepping off a plane somewhere completely unfamiliar and realising that your entire world has just become bigger. A handwritten letter. Someone remembering something you said six months ago. The first sip of tea in the morning when you have nowhere to be. These things might not be productive, but they are evidence that we are alive.

I think this is particularly easy to forget when you’re young. Your twenties can sometimes feel like one long audition for a life you haven’t quite decided whether you want. Everyone is building something. Careers, relationships, bodies, businesses, résumés, savings accounts, social media profiles, futures. There is always another milestone waiting for you. Another question about where you see yourself in five years. Another reminder that you should probably have figured something out by now. Somewhere between internships, rent, emails, deadlines and trying to remember whether you’ve bought groceries, you can accidentally start treating your own existence like a project. You become efficient at living. You schedule happiness between appointments. You tell yourself you’ll read when you have more time, travel when you have more money, fall in love when you’re less busy, write when you’re more disciplined and rest when you’ve earned it. But I say f*ck it. Obviously some of these things are important, but don’t forget to live.

The frightening thing is that forgetting your own life doesn’t necessarily feel dramatic. There isn’t always a moment where you realise you’ve gone wrong. Sometimes it’s simply that you stop noticing things. You stop looking out the train window. You stop reading because scrolling is easier. You stop calling people because you’re busy. You stop going somewhere just because you’re curious. You stop writing because you’re convinced it needs to be good. You stop falling in love because it seems safer not to. You stop doing the things that don’t have an obvious purpose. And slowly, without meaning to, you become very good at surviving while forgetting how to be delighted.

I think Dead Poets Society is ultimately a reminder against that kind of life. It isn’t telling us that careers don’t matter or that responsibility is meaningless. Quite the opposite. It acknowledges that medicine, law, business and engineering are noble pursuits. But it asks us to remember why we pursue them. We don’t become doctors simply to have a title. We become doctors because somewhere beneath the studying and the exhaustion is the desire to help another human being. We don’t build bridges simply because bridges need building. We build them because they connect people and places. We don’t work simply to collect money. We work because we want security, freedom, purpose, opportunity, a life that allows us to experience something beyond the work itself. The practical things are important precisely because they make space for the impractical things.

And the impractical things are often the ones we remember.

Nobody lies awake years later thinking about the perfectly formatted email they sent on a Tuesday afternoon. Nobody remembers how efficiently they cleared their inbox before lunch. We remember the holiday when we laughed until our stomachs hurt. We remember the person we fell hopelessly in love with. We remember the friend who showed up late at night when everything was falling apart. We remember the train journey where we met a stranger and somehow ended up talking for three hours. We remember the summer evenings at the beach when nobody wanted to go home. We remember the tiny restaurant in a foreign country where the waiter knew our order after the third day. We remember the book we read at nineteen that made us see the world differently. We remember standing somewhere beautiful and thinking, almost with disbelief, I can’t believe this is my life.

Those are the moments that make the rest of it worthwhile.

Maybe that’s what carpe diem really means. Not recklessly throwing yourself into every possible experience because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, but understanding that your life is happening now. Not later, once you’ve achieved everything. Not after you’ve become the person you think you’re supposed to be. Now. There is something quietly rebellious about taking that seriously. To care deeply in a world that encourages detachment. To fall in love when everyone tells you to keep your options open. To read when everyone else is scrolling. To travel simply because you want to see what exists beyond the horizon. To write something nobody may ever read. To dance badly because the song is good. To sit with friends for hours when you could technically be doing something more productive. To stop and watch the sunset even though you’re already late.

I think we underestimate how important it is to be a little impractical. We are constantly encouraged to ask what something is for. What is the purpose? What is the outcome? What do you get from it? But sometimes the answer is simply, because it makes me happy. Because it makes me curious. Because it makes me feel connected to another person. Because it makes the world more beautiful. Not everything has to become a career. Not every passion has to become a side hustle. Not every hobby has to be monetised. Not every journey needs to make us more employable. Not every book needs to teach us something. Sometimes a book can simply break your heart in exactly the right way, and sometimes it can just be something entertaining to read at the beach.

Perhaps beauty has become slightly unfashionable because it cannot be quantified. You can’t put a sunset on a spreadsheet. You can’t measure how much a conversation with a stranger changed you. There is no productivity metric for spending an afternoon reading in the sun. Nobody gives you a certificate for making a friend in another country. And yet, these experiences become part of the architecture of who we are.

Travel has taught me this especially well. Some of the moments I treasure most have been completely useless in the conventional sense. Sitting somewhere unfamiliar with a coffee and watching people pass. Getting on a bus without knowing exactly what the journey will look like (or where I’m going tbh). Talking to someone whose life is completely different from mine and discovering that our hopes are remarkably similar. Walking through a city without a destination. Watching the ocean. Getting lost. Finding something unexpected. These moments don’t necessarily change your career or improve your finances, but they change you. And perhaps that’s more valuable.

The same can be said for love. Love is wildly impractical. It makes you vulnerable. It asks you to care about another person’s happiness. It can disrupt your carefully constructed plans. It can break your heart. And still, we keep falling in love. We keep writing songs about it, making films about it, reading novels about it, talking about it with our friends at midnight. Why? Because some experiences are worth the risk of being hurt. Because being alive means allowing yourself to feel things deeply enough that they could actually affect you.

Friendship is equally impractical and equally essential. Staying up too late because your friend needs to talk. Taking a train across a city just because someone had a bad day. Spending money you probably shouldn’t spend on a weekend away together. Sitting on someone’s kitchen floor eating whatever happens to be in the cupboard and talking about everything and nothing. None of these things are particularly efficient. They are simply human.

And perhaps that is the point.

We are human beings, not machines designed to optimise ourselves.

We need beauty. We need stories. We need music, books and art. We need friendships, romance and laughter. We need places that make us feel small. We need conversations that change our minds. We need moments that cannot be explained logically. We need something to look forward to.

I don’t want a life that is merely impressive from the outside. I want one that feels lived from the inside. I want stories I can tell when I’m old. I want books with folded corners and photographs that make me nostalgic. I want friendships that survive decades and distance. I want to know what it feels like to love someone deeply. I want to sit in unfamiliar countries and listen to strangers explain their understanding of life. I want to get on buses without knowing exactly what the day will look like. I want to write things that scare me because they are too honest. I want to keep being surprised by the world.

I want to remember that I am not a résumé.

Neither are you.

We are not our degrees, our salaries, our job titles, our productivity or the number of things we managed to accomplish before thirty. We are the stories we carry, the people we love, the places that changed us, the books that stayed with us, the songs that bring back entire summers, the mistakes that taught us something and the moments when we looked around and thought, I cannot believe I get to be here.

That is the poetry.

And maybe that is why the words from Dead Poets Society continue to resonate so strongly. They aren’t an argument against ambition. They’re an argument against confusing ambition with the entire purpose of being alive. Build the career. Study the medicine. Design the bridge. Run the company. Become brilliant at whatever you choose. Work hard. Be ambitious. But don’t forget to look up. Don’t forget to fall in love. Don’t forget to read the book. Don’t forget to call your friend. Don’t forget to travel somewhere you’ve never been. Don’t forget to sit beneath the tree. Don’t forget to watch the sunset. Don’t forget to write the poem. Don’t forget to tell people you love them.

Because there is a difference between sustaining a life and experiencing one.

And maybe the things we dismiss as unnecessary, the poetry, the beauty, the romance, the books, the late nights, the journeys, the friendships, the music, the love, aren’t distractions from the real business of living.

Maybe they are the real business of living.

Maybe they are what we stay alive for.

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They’re the people who know me beyond the surface. They know the music I turn to when I’m sad, the way my voice changes when I’m trying not to cry, or how I pull my sleeves over my hands when I’m anxious. They know what I’ve been through, not just because I told them, but because they were standing right there with me.

There’s something incredibly grounding about being known that deeply, to be held in a space where you are fully understood and never judged. That’s what my hometown friends gave me: a soft place to land. They were my teenage therapists, my secret-keepers, my co-conspirators in midnight adventures, and the ones who helped shape me into someone who knows how to love and be loved.

I miss the simplicity of it, how easy it was to knock on a door without texting first, to have sleepovers that turned into pancake breakfasts, or to sit in someone’s car just to talk about nothing and everything until the sun came up. The memories blur into each other now: laughing until our stomachs hurt, crying on kitchen floors, dancing in backyards under string lights, making up stupid nicknames that somehow stuck for years. Those are the golden snapshots I carry with me.

Being in a mixed friend group was always something I cherished. The boys were my protectors; the kind that would walk me home at night, make me laugh when I didn’t know I needed it, or show up with fast food just because. The girls were my sisters; the ones who helped me pick outfits, sent long voice notes when I was spiraling, or reminded me of my worth when I forgot it myself.

And when we were all together? It felt like the world stopped spinning for a while. Whether it was summer afternoons at the lake, messy dinners where everyone brought something to the table, or nights we spent lying on the grass looking at the stars, those were the moments that taught me what real connection looks like.

Even now, as life pulls us in different directions, new cities, new jobs, new chapters, I still feel you all beside me. The group chat might go quiet for a few days, but when we need each other, it’s like no time has passed. It’s a rare kind of love that doesn’t fade. It adapts. It grows with us.

There’s something sacred about the people who knew you when. The ones who remember how shy you were, or how loud. Who stood beside you at school dances, who stayed up late to talk about dreams that seemed impossibly far away. And now, watching each of you become who you are, it’s like watching stars form. I am so proud to love you.

So this letter is for you, my chosen family. For the laughter, the loyalty, the comfort. For loving me through every season. For never making me feel alone. You are the foundation of the kind of love I seek everywhere else.

And no matter how far we go, how much life changes, there’s a piece of my heart that will always live in those shared memories. You are my home.

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I’ve always been more interested in people than places. The places are beautiful, of course. I remember the turquoise waters, the mountain roads, the old European streets, the smell of rain on warm pavement, the markets buzzing with life, and sunsets that seem almost too beautiful to be real. But if I’m honest, when I think back on a journey years later, it isn’t usually the landscape that comes to mind first. It’s the people.

It’s the safari guide explaining the habits of elephants with such passion that you begin to see them as old souls rather than wild animals. It’s the elderly woman I met on a train who told me about falling in love with her husband sixty years ago. It’s the bartender who somehow became philosopher for an evening, sharing everything from heartbreak to politics while drying glasses behind the counter. It’s the woman selling fruit at a roadside market who laughed at my imperfect Swahili before patiently teaching me another word. It’s the taxi driver proudly showing me photos of his grandchildren. Somehow, these are the moments that stay with me far longer than any postcard ever could.

I’ve realised I’m the person who asks perhaps one too many questions. Not because I’m nosy, but because I’m genuinely fascinated. I want to know what people dream about. Whether they’re happy where they are. What their childhood was like. Whether they would choose the same life all over again if they had the chance. Sometimes I catch myself halfway through a conversation thinking, Lilith, you’ve known this person for exactly eight minutes... perhaps asking about the meaning of life is a little ambitious. But more often than not, people answer. Not politely. Honestly.

Maybe we’re all just waiting for someone to ask us something that goes beyond, So, what do you do?

Travel has taught me that despite how different the world appears, people are remarkably alike. A fisherman on the East African coast worries about providing for his family in much the same way an office worker in Berlin does. A student in Rotterdam wonders whether she’s chosen the right degree. A café owner in France hopes people keep returning. A grandmother in Tanzania lights up when talking about her grandchildren just as mine did back in Germany. Different languages, different climates, different traditions; but the same hopes, the same fears, the same desire to love and to be loved.

I think that’s why travelling feels so hopeful. The news often presents the world as divided into neat categories: countries, religions, politics, cultures, opinions. But the moment you actually sit down with someone over a coffee or a meal, those categories begin to blur. Eventually, everyone starts talking about the people they love, the things they miss, the dreams they haven’t quite let go of, the mistakes they still think about, or the places they hope to see one day. It reminds me that people are infinitely more interesting than stereotypes ever allow them to be.

Curiosity has become my favourite way of moving through the world. Not the kind that wants to be right, but the kind that genuinely wants to understand. I think there is a difference. It’s easy to ask questions while secretly waiting for your turn to speak. It’s much harder, and much more beautiful, to ask because you’re prepared for your perspective to change.

Books do something similar for me. I’ve never understood limiting myself to one genre because life itself certainly doesn’t. One month I’m reading Trevor Noah’s memoir, the next Dan Brown, then Nawal El Saadawi, Robert Seethaler, Paulo Coelho or a book on anthropology. Every author offers me another pair of eyes through which to see the world. Reading, much like travelling, is simply another exercise in curiosity. Every page quietly asks: What if someone else’s truth could teach you something about your own?

I think curiosity is also one of the greatest expressions of love. Not just at the beginning, when everything feels exciting and new, but years later. Asking someone how their day really was. Wanting to know what’s been on their mind lately. Wondering how they’ve changed. People aren’t static; we’re constantly becoming someone new. Perhaps the happiest relationships are simply the ones where people never stop being curious about each other.

The same is true for friendships. Some of my favourite conversations have started with absolutely no destination. A coffee that accidentally became dinner. A walk that somehow lasted four hours. Sitting on a beach long after sunset because someone asked one question that opened the door to twenty more. Those conversations remind me that listening is perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person. To make someone feel genuinely interesting is an act of generosity.

I’ve come to believe that the richest people in the world aren’t necessarily those who own the most things, but those who remain endlessly fascinated by life itself. The people who still stop to admire flowers growing through cracks in the pavement. Who ask elderly strangers about the cities they grew up in. Who are willing to change their minds after hearing another perspective. Who remain students of the world no matter how old they become.

Every time I travel, I return with something I can’t unpack from my suitcase. A story. A sentence. A recipe scribbled onto a napkin. A different way of greeting someone. A piece of advice from a stranger I’ll probably never see again. Tiny fragments of other people’s lives somehow become part of my own.

Maybe that’s what travelling has always been about. Not ticking countries off a list or collecting passport stamps, but collecting perspectives. Collecting moments that quietly reshape the way you see the world. Collecting conversations that remind you how wonderfully complicated and beautifully ordinary people really are.

So I hope I never lose my curiosity. I hope I continue asking waiters what their favourite dish is. I hope I keep talking to strangers on long train rides. I hope I keep wandering into conversations that were supposed to last five minutes and somehow become entire afternoons. I hope I never become too certain, too comfortable, or too convinced that I’ve seen enough.

Because the older I get, the more I realise that life rarely changes because of the answers we find.

It changes because of the questions we’re brave enough to ask.

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Every single time, I have to suppress a smile.

Because yes. I know.

I’ve known for as long as I can remember. I’ve been named Lilith my entire life.

Yet somehow, there is always someone who feels compelled to introduce me to my own name, as though they’re handing me a secret I’ve somehow managed to miss for the last twenty-three years. It usually happens at university, over dinner, while travelling, or whenever the conversation drifts towards mythology, religion or feminism. More often than not, it’s accompanied by an enthusiastic explanation about Adam’s first wife and a look that suggests this revelation is about to fundamentally change my understanding of myself.

I almost want to reply, “I appreciate the TED Talk, but my parents got there first.”

Being named Lilith is peculiar because your name often arrives before you do. Long before anyone knows your personality, your values or your story, they already have assumptions. A name is supposed to introduce you, but mine often feels like it introduces itself.

For anyone unfamiliar with the story, Lilith appears in ancient Jewish mythology, medieval rabbinic folklore (most famously in The Alphabet of Ben Sira), and Mesopotamian legend as Adam’s first wife—long before Eve ever entered the picture.

Unlike Eve, who was later created from Adam’s rib, Lilith was crafted from the exact same earth and dust as Adam himself. Equal from the very beginning, she viewed their partnership as one of absolute peers. However, according to the legend, when Adam demanded her submission and expected her to take a subservient role, Lilith fiercely refused. She argued that since they were fashioned from the same soil, neither had the right to rule over the other.

When she refused to yield, she spoke the secret, explicit name of God and fled. For her defiance and refusal to obey Adam’s authority, she was formally banished from the Garden of Eden and condemned to the wild wilderness beyond its borders. Angels were dispatched to drag her back, but she stood firm. Rather than surrender her autonomy or live under another’s command, she accepted her exile—choosing freedom over servitude, and cementing her legacy not just as a figure of myth, but as an enduring symbol of unyielding independence.

It is, depending on who tells the story, either one of the most empowering tales ever told or one of the most terrifying.

History has always had a fascinating relationship with women who refuse to stay where they’re expected to.

In later traditions, Lilith was transformed into something darker. She became a demon, a temptress, a warning, the embodiment of female danger. It’s almost ironic how often women who challenge the status quo become villains in the stories history chooses to preserve. Perhaps that’s easier than admitting they simply wanted equality.

Centuries later, feminism reclaimed her. Today, Lilith has become something of an icon. She appears in novels, paintings, music and academic essays. She represents independence, autonomy and the refusal to apologise for taking up space.

And somehow, every few months, someone reminds me of that.

As though I could forget.

Growing up, I didn’t think much about it. My name was simply unusual. Teachers paused during attendance before confidently mispronouncing it. Children asked whether it was short for something. Adults suggested Lily would be easier, which is simply not my name and I refuse to be called by it. I learned early on that introducing myself usually came with a conversation afterwards.

Only later did I realise people weren’t just curious about my name.

They were curious about what kind of person someone named Lilith must be.

“That’s such a strong name.”

“Your parents were brave.”

“It really suits you.”

“I imagine you’re quite outspoken.”

It’s funny how six letters can carry thousands of years of expectations.

For a long time, I wondered whether I was supposed to live up to them. Was I supposed to always be fearless? Always independent? Always politically aware? Always confident? As though being named after one of mythology’s most controversial women somehow required me to become an icon of modern feminism before I’d even finished my morning coffee.

The irony is that most days I feel remarkably ordinary. I overthink text messages. I buy too many books. I spend more money on fun drinks and good food than I probably should. I travel whenever I can. I cry during films. I forget to water my flowers that sit in the vases, reminding me how beautiful nature can be. I wonder what I’m doing with my life at least twice a week. Hardly mythical behaviour.

But maybe that’s exactly why I love the story of Lilith—not because I see myself in every version of her, but because nobody seems to agree on who she actually was.

Was she rebellious?

Was she misunderstood?

Was she dangerous?

Or was she simply a woman unwilling to compromise herself?

Every generation seems to rewrite her. Perhaps that’s why myths survive. They leave enough space for every era to see itself reflected back.

I’ve noticed something else over the years. The people who bring up my name usually reveal just as much about themselves as they do about Lilith. Some tell the story with admiration. Others with caution. Some see the first feminist. Others still see a demon. Everyone focuses on a different part of the myth.

Maybe mythology has always functioned like a mirror.

We don’t really see Lilith.

We see our own ideas about women reflected back at us.

Strong women have always made people uncomfortable. History is full of them. Women who spoke too loudly. Women who wrote when they were told to remain silent. Women who travelled alone. Women who chose careers over convention. Women who questioned authority. Women who refused to make themselves smaller to fit someone else’s expectations.

Time and time again they were described using remarkably similar words.

Difficult.

Dangerous.

Too much.

History has a habit of punishing women for qualities it later celebrates.

Perhaps Lilith became one of the earliest examples of that contradiction.

The older I get, though, the less interested I am in becoming my name. Instead, I’m interested in becoming myself. Because perhaps that’s what the story was really about all along. Not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Not strength as performance. But the quiet belief that you are allowed to define yourself. That your life doesn’t have to fit someone else’s script. That leaving something which diminishes you isn’t failure. That equality shouldn’t require explanation.

There’s something strangely freeing about carrying a name with so much history attached to it. It reminds me that stories are never fixed. They evolve. They’re questioned. They’re reclaimed. Every generation writes another chapter.

So yes, my name is Lilith.

Yes, I know the mythology.

I’ve heard it hundreds of times.

And every time someone smiles and asks, “Do you know what your name means?” I smile back.

Because while they’re telling me about a woman who refused to let someone else define her, I’m quietly continuing to do exactly the same.

Maybe that’s the greatest gift my parents unknowingly gave me.

Not a myth.

Not a symbol.

But a reminder that names may carry history.

The story you make of them is entirely your own.

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Sometimes I think every woman has her own little inner Carrie Bradshaw. Not necessarily the newspaper column or the obsession with Mr. Big, but the constant narration happening inside our heads. Was that text too eager? Should I have said something different? Why is choosing an outfit for a first date somehow harder than writing a university dissertation? Being a woman often feels like living inside an endless internal monologue. One where you’re simultaneously wondering if your eyeliner is even (more like twins or cousins), whether you’re making the right career move, what you’re cooking for dinner, and if that one embarrassing thing you said three years ago still keeps other people awake at night too. Spoiler: it probably doesn’t.

There is something so comforting about the fact that Sex and the City never tried to make womanhood look neat. Carrie was chaotic. Charlotte believed in fairy tales. Miranda believed in herself. Samantha believed life was simply too short to apologise for taking up space. None of them got it right all the time. That was the point. Some episodes ended with weddings. Others ended with breakups. Some ended with terrible dates, career failures or existential crises over Chinese takeaway. Life carried on anyway.

I think that’s why the show still feels so familiar. Because being in your twenties—or honestly any age—rarely feels like you’ve reached some magical point where everything suddenly makes sense. Instead, life becomes a collection of coffee dates that accidentally turn into therapy sessions. Voice notes that somehow last twelve minutes. Group chats that know more about your love life than you do. Girls’ dinners where somebody inevitably says, “Okay... I have gossip,” and suddenly nobody touches their pasta because the story is simply too important.

Female friendship has always been the greatest love story in Sex and the City. Not the men. Never the men. The women. The fact that no matter how disastrous the date, how confusing the situationship or how spectacularly life fell apart, there were always three people waiting with brunch reservations and honest opinions. Perhaps that’s why so many of us long for friendships like that. Not because they’re perfect. Because they’re consistent.

Women have a remarkable way of making ordinary moments feel cinematic. The first warm Saturday in spring suddenly requires sitting outside for six hours simply because the sun has decided to show up again. Coffee somehow turns into Aperol. The walk home somehow turns into another hour because nobody has finished talking. A quick catch-up somehow becomes an entire afternoon. There is an art to lingering. Women have mastered it.

We linger over conversations. Over desserts. Over goodbyes that take another forty-five minutes sitting in the car with the engine turned off. Over analysing a text message that objectively required about seven seconds of thought. And honestly? I hope we never stop. Because somewhere between discussing books, careers, politics, travel plans, dating disasters and where to find the best cinnamon roll in town, life quietly happens.

Maybe that’s why cafés feel almost sacred. Not because of the coffee. Because they’re where stories are exchanged. Dreams become real when spoken aloud. Heartbreak becomes manageable once your best friend says, “You deserve better.” Suddenly everything feels possible again.

I also love that Sex and the City gave women permission to be contradictory. To want careers and romance. Adventure and stability. A passport full of stamps and a home that feels safe. To love dressing up one evening and spend the next in oversized jumpers reading a book. We’re so often asked to choose one version of ourselves: the ambitious woman, the soft woman, the independent woman, the nurturing woman. Why not all of them?

Some mornings I want to conquer the world. Other mornings I simply want to sit by a café window with a cappuccino and watch strangers live their lives. Neither version is less ambitious. One is simply quieter.

Perhaps the greatest lie we’re sold is that womanhood is a destination. That one day you’ll wake up and finally feel like you’ve become a proper adult. Instead, I think womanhood is a constant becoming. You collect versions of yourself. The teenager who thought twenty-five sounded impossibly grown up. The university student surviving on pesto pasta. The solo traveller who suddenly realised she was braver than she’d ever given herself credit for. The woman learning that saying no can be just as powerful as saying yes. The friend. The daughter. The colleague. The woman who buys herself flowers simply because tulips looked particularly beautiful that morning.

All of them are you. None of them cancel the others out.

If Sex and the City taught us anything, it’s that life isn’t measured by milestones nearly as much as moments. By laughter echoing across restaurant tables. By spontaneous weekends away. By dancing in kitchens. By phone calls that begin with “Are you busy?” and end two hours later. By trying on six outfits before deciding the first one was actually fine. By buying the expensive drinks and dinners because life is happening now, not someday. By saying yes to another glass of wine because the conversation is simply too good to leave.

Maybe that’s the real art of being a woman.

Not perfect skincare. Not finding the perfect partner. Not owning the perfect wardrobe.

It’s learning how to romanticise your own life without waiting for someone else to make it interesting.

It’s buying yourself the flowers. Booking the solo trip. Calling your friends just because. Reading in cafés. Laughing too loudly. Wearing the dress that’s “too much.” Celebrating small victories with unreasonable enthusiasm. Creating traditions out of ordinary Tuesdays.

Because maybe Carrie had it right all along.

The best love stories are important.

But they’re rarely the only ones.

Sometimes the greatest romance of your life is the one you build with your friends, your city, your dreams, and with the woman you’re slowly, beautifully becoming.

And maybe that’s what Sex and the City was trying to tell us all along.

The shoes were never really the point.

The conversations were.

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The ones who instinctively reach for their phone the moment they sit down.

And the ones who pull a slightly worn paperback, a dog-eared novel, or a well-loved Kindle from their bag.

I aspire to be the second person more often.

Not because I think reading makes anyone morally superior. It doesn’t. We’ve all fallen victim to the gravitational pull of Instagram reels, five-minute TikToks that mysteriously become fifty, or checking the weather only to emerge forty minutes later knowing what someone in New York had for breakfast.

But there is something undeniably different about opening a book in public. It feels intimate. Almost rebellious.

The world has quietly accepted that every spare moment should be filled with scrolling. Waiting for the tram? Scroll. Standing in the supermarket queue? Scroll. Sitting alone in a café? Scroll. Waiting for a friend who’s running five minutes late? Scroll.

We’ve become remarkably uncomfortable with empty moments, as though silence is something to fix rather than something to inhabit.

A book asks something completely different of you. It asks you to stay. To pay attention. To disappear for a little while.

I’ve started carrying a book almost everywhere I go. Sometimes it’s a novel that’s already beginning to soften around the edges from being shoved into my purse. Sometimes it’s my Kindle, tucked safely between my wallet and headphones, ready for unexpected moments of waiting.

Because there are so many of those moments.

Ten minutes before a lecture. Twenty minutes on the train. A delayed appointment. A coffee arriving before the friend you’re meeting.

Tiny pockets of time that used to disappear into my phone now become another chapter. Another conversation with a character I’ve started caring about. Another page that quietly changes the way I see the world.

There’s something wonderfully romantic about reading in public. Not performative romantic. Real romantic.

Watching the landscape blur past the train window while reading a story set somewhere completely different. Sitting by the café window as rain taps softly against the glass, your coffee slowly growing cold because you’ve reached a chapter you simply cannot leave. Reading on a park bench while spring cautiously unfolds around you, looking up every so often just to watch the world carry on.

You become both part of the scene and slightly removed from it.

Present.

Yet somewhere else entirely.

I love looking around trains and spotting fellow readers. Someone highlighting passages in a biography. Someone smiling quietly at a romance novel. Someone completely absorbed in a thriller, missing their station because they simply had to know what happened next.

Without exchanging a single word, it feels as though you’re part of the same quiet club.

A shared understanding that stories are worth carrying around. That a backpack should always have room for one more book.

Books also make waiting feel different.

Waiting stops feeling like wasted time.

Instead, you secretly hope the train is delayed by another ten minutes because you’re in the middle of a particularly good chapter. You arrive early on purpose so you can read before meeting someone. The queue at the doctor’s office suddenly isn’t quite so unbearable.

Time becomes something to savour instead of something to kill.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with phones. My Kindle itself is proof that technology can make reading more accessible than ever. I love that I can carry hundreds of books without breaking my back. I love being able to finish one novel at midnight and begin another thirty seconds later.

Technology isn’t the enemy.

Mindless consumption is.

Scrolling often leaves me feeling as though I’ve consumed everything and remembered nothing.

Reading does the opposite.

A single sentence can stay with me for weeks. A paragraph can completely rearrange my brain chemistry. A character can quietly accompany me long after I’ve closed the book.

Stories have a way of settling inside you.

Algorithms rarely do.

Reading also changes the way you notice the world. When you spend hours inside novels, you begin collecting details the way writers do: the old man feeding pigeons at the station, the woman laughing into her phone, the child pressing their face against the train window, the smell of fresh croissants drifting out of a bakery, the way afternoon sunlight spills across café tables on a summers day.

Books teach you that ordinary moments are never really ordinary.

Perhaps that’s why readers often seem to walk through life just a little more slowly.

Not because they’re in a hurry to get somewhere else.

Because they’re paying attention.

Some of my happiest afternoons have looked remarkably uneventful from the outside. A window seat. An iced matcha. A book. Three hours disappearing without me noticing.

No notifications.

No endless stream of opinions demanding immediate attention.

Just me and someone else’s carefully chosen words.

It feels increasingly rare these days to give something your undivided attention.

Reading asks for exactly that.

And in return, it offers something we’ve quietly become starved of:

Presence.

I sometimes think carrying a book is less about always reading it and more about the possibility of reading it. It’s a promise to yourself. A reminder that if the world suddenly gives you twenty unexpected minutes, you already know how you’d like to spend them.

Instead of filling every silence with noise, you fill it with stories.

Instead of reaching for distraction, you reach for imagination.

Instead of endlessly refreshing your feed, you turn another page.

There is something deeply comforting about that choice.

Maybe that’s why I keep slipping a book into my bag before I leave the house. Most days I don’t even think about it. It’s become as automatic as grabbing my keys.

Because somewhere between the errands, train rides, coffee dates and quiet afternoons, there will almost certainly be a moment waiting to be filled.

And I’d much rather spend it inside a story than at the bottom of an endless feed.

After all, one of them ends with “The End.”

The other never really ends at all.

Sometimes they’re on another continent. Sometimes they’re only three or four or six hours away. Sometimes they’re just far enough that coffee has to become a plan instead of a spontaneous text. And somehow, that small distance can feel enormous.

Nobody really talks about long-distance friendships because they aren’t usually considered tragic enough. They don’t have breakup songs or grand declarations in the rain. There are no films where someone runs through an airport because their best friend moved away. There aren’t anniversaries marking the day your friend packed up their apartment, started university in another city, or accepted a job somewhere new.

Life simply... happens.

One person moves for work. Another falls in love and follows someone across the country. Someone else spends a semester abroad and somehow never really comes back. Before you know it, the people who used to be five minutes away are now five hours away.

Suddenly, “Want to grab coffee?” becomes, “What weekend are you free next month?”

Lunch breaks become voice notes. Birthdays become video calls. The everyday moments—the ones that quietly build a friendship—become much harder to share.

You don’t hear about the awkward first date over brunch the next morning; you hear about it a week later in a seven-minute voice note. You don’t celebrate promotions together after work, you send a string of heart emojis and promise you’ll celebrate properly when you’re finally in the same place again.

Sometimes weeks go by without speaking. Not because you care less, but because adulthood has a remarkable way of filling every available hour. Work, university, relationships, laundry, appointments, family, trying to cook something other than pasta—it all piles up until you suddenly realise it’s been three weeks since your last conversation.

Then the guilt arrives.

“I’m such a bad friend.”

“I should have called.”

“We really need to catch up.”

But perhaps one of the greatest gifts of real friendship is that it understands seasons. It understands deadlines, moving boxes, heartbreak, exams, busy calendars and the simple fact that life sometimes gets in the way.

Real friendship doesn’t keep score. It doesn’t measure love by response times. It simply waits. And then comes the reunion.

There is something almost magical about seeing a long-distance friend again. You’re slightly nervous on the journey there. What if it’s awkward? What if you’ve both changed too much?

Then you see each other.

Within thirty seconds you’re laughing exactly the way you always did. Months disappear. The inside jokes are still funny. The conversations don’t begin with small talk—they begin somewhere in the middle, as though you had only paused yesterday. You pick up right where you left off. It’s almost unbelievable how quickly a friendship remembers itself.

Of course, you’ve both changed. New jobs. New apartments. New relationships. New worries. New dreams. Entire chapters have unfolded while you were apart.

But somehow, underneath all those changes, the friendship still fits.

I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about long-distance friendships. They prove that closeness isn’t measured by frequency. It’s measured by familiarity.

By knowing exactly how someone takes their coffee. By remembering the names of the people they’ve loved. By instinctively sending them the meme that only they would understand. By collecting stories throughout your week because you already know you’ll tell them later.

“I have to tell them this.”

That thought never really goes away.

Maybe that’s what love looks like in friendship.

Not constant presence.

Constant consideration.

Nobody accidentally maintains a friendship across distance. Whether it’s two hours by train or twelve hours by plane, it always comes down to the same thing: choosing each other again and again.

Choosing to make the journey.

Choosing to answer the late-night phone call.

Choosing to spend your off time visiting a friend instead of somewhere new.

Choosing to keep showing up, even when life would make it easier not to.

Without convenience, all that’s left is intention.

And perhaps that’s why these friendships become so precious.

When you finally reunite, nobody wants the day to end. You order another match. Then another drink. You stretch the afternoon into the evening because there’s always one more story, one more update, one more thing you’ve been saving to tell them in person.

You walk familiar streets, revisit favourite cafés, laugh until your stomach hurts and somehow manage to fit months of life into a single afternoon.

Then, inevitably, someone checks the time.

There’s a train to catch.

A drive home.

Work tomorrow morning.

The hugs linger a little longer now.

“See you soon?”

“Definitely.”

You both mean it, even if “soon” might be another two months.

And somehow, that’s okay.

Because these friendships teach you something that proximity never could. They teach you that love isn’t always about being there all the time. Sometimes it’s about knowing that no matter how much time passes, no matter how many kilometres separate you, you can always find your way back to each other. As the train pulls away or the car disappears around the corner, your heart always feels a little heavier than before.

You wish they lived closer.

You wish coffee could be spontaneous again.

You wish ordinary Tuesdays were shared instead of scheduled.

But beneath that sadness sits something much bigger. Gratitude. Because what an extraordinary privilege it is to miss someone this much. To have people scattered across different cities, different countries and different lives who still feel like home. To know that somewhere, whether it’s two hours away or two continents away, there’s someone who knows every version of you and loves you through all of them.

Maybe that’s the real magic of long-distance friendships. Not that no time has passed. But that no amount of time ever seems to matter. Because home isn’t always the place you return to.

Sometimes, it’s simply the people who make months disappear with a single hug.

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It has become something of a generational motto—do it for the plot. A phrase thrown around before booking flights at midnight, moving abroad on a whim, saying yes to karaoke despite possessing absolutely no musical talent, deciding to dye your hair after one glass of wine, or texting someone you probably shouldn’t. Usually, it’s said with a laugh.

But I think there’s something surprisingly profound hiding inside it.

Because doing it for the plot isn’t really about making reckless decisions. At least not most of the time. It’s about choosing life over predictability. Curiosity over routine. Collecting memories instead of excuses.

The older I get, the more I realise that the moments I tell stories about were almost never the carefully planned ones.

Nobody gathers around a dinner table saying, “Let me tell you about that perfectly average Tuesday when absolutely nothing happened.”

Instead, we tell the stories about boarding the wrong train and ending up in the prettiest little town we’d never even heard of. About missing a flight and accidentally making friends in the airport. About dancing barefoot because our shoes hurt too much. About ordering something on the menu we couldn’t pronounce and discovering our new favourite meal. About getting caught in the rain and laughing instead of running for cover.

The plot rarely lives inside the plan.

It lives inside the detour.

Growing up, we’re told to make sensible decisions. Build the perfect CV. Stay on track. Think ahead. Have a five-year plan. Save your money. Choose security. And while there’s wisdom in all of that, there also has to be room for spontaneity—for saying yes simply because something makes your heart race a little faster.

Some of the best decisions I’ve ever made looked completely irrational on paper.

Booking a solo trip to a country where I barely knew anyone. Living out of a suitcase. Starting conversations with strangers. Accepting invitations I almost declined because I was tired or nervous. Taking opportunities before I felt entirely ready.

None of those decisions came with guarantees.

All of them came with stories.

I think we underestimate how much our lives are built from tiny moments of courage rather than enormous leaps. Doing it for the plot isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s finally joining the dance class you’ve been talking about for months. Sometimes it’s wearing the outfit you’ve been saving for a “special occasion.” Sometimes it’s sitting alone in a café with a good book instead of waiting until someone is free to join you. Sometimes it’s applying for the job you secretly think you’re underqualified for or saying yes to the weekend trip that wasn’t in your plans.

Not because every opportunity becomes magical.

But because every yes slightly expands the life you’re living.

Of course, the phrase has developed a reputation for encouraging mildly questionable decisions.

We’ve all seen it.

“Should I move to Paris?”

“Do it for the plot.”

“Should I text my ex?”

Maybe... not for this particular plot.

Because every good story also needs character development. And character development sometimes means learning that not every dramatic twist deserves a sequel.

The plot isn’t about chaos.

It’s about growth.

It’s about becoming someone who says yes to life while also knowing when to say no.

The older I get, the more I think the phrase is really about permission. Permission to be imperfect. Permission to be inexperienced. Permission to collect stories before collecting certainty.

We’re often so busy trying to optimize our lives that we accidentally forget to live them.

We compare careers, relationships, savings accounts, apartments and timelines, while life quietly unfolds in all the spaces that can’t be measured. The spontaneous road trip. The conversation that changes your perspective. The city that unexpectedly feels like home. The stranger who becomes a lifelong friend. The café you’ll return to every time you visit. The sunset you almost missed because you nearly left early.

None of those moments improve your résumé.

But they shape you in ways no bullet point ever could.

Somewhere along the way, adulthood convinces us that every decision has to be strategic. Maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe some decisions are allowed to exist simply because they’ll make your world bigger.

Because one day you’ll realise you don’t remember every productive afternoon or every carefully organised week. You’ll remember the evening that turned into sunrise. The people you laughed with until your stomach hurt. The countries that quietly stole pieces of your heart. The conversations that lasted hours because nobody wanted to be the first to say goodbye.

Those become the chapters.

And perhaps that’s the real beauty of doing it for the plot.

It reminds us that our lives are not projects to perfect.

They’re stories to live.

Not every chapter has to be extraordinary. Some will be quiet. Some will be messy. Some won’t make sense until years later. Some will end differently than you imagined. Others will surprise you completely.

Every now and then, life hands you a decision that feels slightly bigger than the moment itself. You hesitate. You overthink. You imagine every possible outcome. And then, somewhere beneath all the practical reasons not to, there’s a small voice whispering:

“Go on.”

Maybe you’ll miss the train.

Maybe you’ll fall in love.

Maybe you’ll embarrass yourself.

Maybe you’ll discover a version of yourself you never knew existed.

You won’t know unless you turn the page.

So take the trip. Start the conversation. Read the book. Wear the dress. Apply for the job. Call your grandmother. Learn the language. Order the thing you can’t pronounce. Dance even if nobody else is. Kiss them if it feels right. Leave if it doesn’t.

Not because every decision needs to be impulsive.

But because the best stories rarely begin with someone choosing the safest option.

Sometimes they begin with a quiet smile, a deep breath, and one wonderfully dangerous thought:

Well... it’ll make a great story.

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The title alone carries a weight that is difficult to comprehend if you didn’t grow up under apartheid. Born a Crime. Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Literally.

Trevor Noah’s very existence was illegal.

His mother, a Black Xhosa woman, and his Swiss-German father could not legally have a child together under apartheid in South Africa. As Trevor explains throughout the book, his birth was proof that a law had been broken. Imagine growing up knowing that your existence itself was once considered criminal by the country you were born into. It’s one of those facts that feels almost impossible to process from today’s perspective. And yet, what makes Born a Crime so extraordinary isn’t that it asks for sympathy. It rarely does. Instead, Trevor Noah does something much more difficult: he makes you laugh.

There are moments in this book that are genuinely hilarious. Laugh-out-loud-on-a-train kind of funny. Stories about childhood mischief, awkward misunderstandings, entrepreneurial schemes, family dynamics, language mishaps. His timing is impeccable, his observations razor sharp.

But then, almost without warning, the laughter catches in your throat. Because beneath every funny story lies something much heavier. A political system built on separation.

Poverty.

Violence.

Identity.

Survival.

What impressed me most was Trevor Noah’s ability to explain apartheid not through statistics or political speeches but through ordinary life. Through childhood memories. Through family dinners. Through school. Through language.

History suddenly stops being abstract.

It becomes deeply personal.

One of the recurring themes throughout the book is language. Trevor writes that language could often bridge divides that skin color could not. Speaking someone’s mother tongue immediately changed the way people saw him. Reading those chapters reminded me how powerful language really is—not just as communication, but as respect, belonging, and connection. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons the memoir feels so alive. It’s never really about politics alone. It’s about people. His mother, Patricia, is undoubtedly the heart of the entire book. If Trevor Noah is the narrator, she is its soul.

I’ve rarely encountered such an extraordinary portrait of a mother. Strong without becoming hardened. Deeply religious while fiercely independent. Funny, stubborn, endlessly resilient. She refused to let apartheid define either her own life or her son’s future.

She believed in possibility before the world gave her any reason to.

Reading about her often felt like watching someone repeatedly choose hope in situations where hopelessness would have been understandable. And perhaps that is the greatest lesson of the book. Not resilience as some fashionable buzzword.

Real resilience.

The kind born out of necessity.

The kind that wakes up every morning and keeps going anyway. As I read, I couldn’t help but think about the Trevor Noah we know today.

The internationally celebrated comedian.

The bestselling author.

The former host of The Daily Show.

A man interviewing presidents, actors, activists, and world leaders. It feels almost surreal when you hold both versions of his life in your mind at once. The little boy who had to hide because simply existing alongside his parents could attract unwanted attention. And the man now standing on stages around the world, telling stories to millions of people. It’s easy to look at successful people and see only the finished product.

The awards.

The fame.

The confidence.

Books like Born a Crime remind us that every success story has chapters we rarely see.

The uncertainty.

The fear.

The small acts of courage that eventually become extraordinary lives. What I appreciated most was that Trevor Noah never writes as though he has all the answers. He isn’t trying to turn himself into a hero. He’s simply telling the truth as he experienced it. Sometimes that truth is heartbreaking. Sometimes absurd. Often both simultaneously.

As someone who has spent considerable time in southern Africa, parts of the book resonated with me in unexpected ways. The multilingual conversations. The humor. The warmth of communities despite difficult histories. The complexity that so often gets flattened when people talk about Africa as though it were a single place rather than an entire continent of countless stories.

Reading Born a Crime reminded me once again that history isn’t something locked away in museums. It lives in people. It shapes childhoods. It echoes through families. And sometimes it produces voices capable of telling those stories with remarkable grace. What Trevor Noah has accomplished isn’t just writing a successful memoir. He’s managed to create something far rarer.

A book that educates without preaching.

A book that confronts unimaginable injustice without surrendering its sense of humor.

A book that leaves you laughing one page and quietly staring out the window the next.

By the time I closed the final chapter, I wasn’t simply impressed by how far Trevor Noah had come. I was struck by how extraordinary it is that he made it there at all. Born a Crime isn’t only a story about apartheid. It’s a story about mothers who refuse to stop believing in their children. About identity. About language. About finding your place in a world determined to define you before you’ve had the chance to define yourself.

And perhaps most importantly, it’s a reminder that history is never just something that happened.

For many people, it is something they lived.

And thanks to Trevor Noah, many of us get the privilege of learning from it.

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Not in the dramatic, life-changing sense. More in the way that the world outside seems to collectively agree that perhaps today doesn’t need to be rushed. The streets are quieter. The sky hangs low and grey. People linger a little longer over their coffee. Plans soften around the edges.

On sunny days, there’s often a pressure to be productive. To go somewhere. To make the most of the weather. Rain, however, asks nothing of you.

Rain says: stay awhile.

Some of my favorite days have been rainy ones. The kind where you wake up to the sound of water tapping against the window and immediately decide that whatever was on your to-do list can wait another hour. The kind where the kettle goes on before you’ve even properly opened your eyes.

There is a particular comfort in rainy day rituals. Pulling on an oversized sweater. Making tea. Lighting a candle even though it’s technically the middle of the afternoon. Watching droplets race down the glass while convincing yourself that reading another chapter absolutely counts as being productive.

And honestly, I think it does.

Reading on a rainy day feels different than reading any other time. Maybe because the weather removes the feeling that you should be somewhere else. The world shrinks to the pages in front of you. A mystery becomes more mysterious. A coming-of-age story feels more intimate. Even a book you’ve read before somehow feels new when accompanied by the soundtrack of rain.

The same goes for podcasts.

There is something wonderfully comforting about listening to strangers discuss books, travel, history, relationships, or life’s bigger questions while you’re pottering around your apartment. Suddenly folding laundry feels less like a chore and more like a scene from a cozy film. You’re not alone; you’re simply sharing the afternoon with voices and stories.

Rainy days are also excellent for overthinking in moderation.

Not the 3 a.m. existential kind.

More the gentle wondering kind.

The kind where you find yourself thinking about people you haven’t seen in years. Places you’d like to visit someday. Books that changed you. Conversations that stayed with you. The kind of thoughts that arrive quietly and leave just as softly.

Perhaps that’s what I like most about these days.

They create space.

Space to think.

Space to rest.

Space to simply exist without constantly chasing the next thing.

And then, of course, there is comfort food.

Every rainy day deserves something warm. A bowl of pasta. Fresh bread with too much butter. Soup simmering on the stove. A grilled cheese that somehow tastes significantly better when the weather is terrible.

Nobody craves a salad during a rainstorm.

Rain calls for carbohydrates and emotional support meals.

And maybe a little treat.

A fancy hot chocolate with melted marshmallows. A homemade masala chai. A slated maple matcha if you’re feeling virtuous. Or perhaps a small mocktail later in the evening—something citrusy or herbal, enjoyed while curled up with a book you’ve promised yourself you’ll only read one more chapter of.

Which is always a lie.

The beautiful thing about rainy days is that they remind us that not every day needs to be memorable.

Not every day needs a grand adventure, a perfect photograph, or a life-changing revelation.

Some days are simply meant to be lived quietly.

A book. A podcast. A warm meal. The sound of rain.

A text from a friend asking what you’re up to.

The comforting realization that the world can continue spinning while you spend an afternoon doing very little at all.

And perhaps that’s the real luxury these days offer.

Not excitement. Not productivity. Just permission.

Permission to slow down. Permission to stay in. Permission to let the rain fall outside while you create a small, cozy world of your own inside.

And honestly, sometimes that’s more than enough.

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Because sometimes it feels like we live in a world so afraid of saying the wrong thing that people have stopped saying anything real at all.

And before anyone misunderstands me—this is not nostalgia for cruelty or ignorance disguised as “free speech.” Progress matters. Language matters. Compassion matters. The world becoming more conscious about racism, sexism, discrimination, and inequality is deeply important. There are conversations that absolutely needed to happen and still do.

But somewhere along the way, especially online, nuance started disappearing.

Everything became flattened into categories of right and wrong, educated and ignorant, acceptable and problematic. And increasingly, people seem less interested in understanding each other than in proving they themselves stand on the morally correct side of every conversation.

It creates this strange atmosphere where many people no longer speak honestly—they speak strategically.

And that makes genuine connection almost impossible.

Because human experiences are messy. Especially when you travel. Especially when you live between cultures, countries, and different ways of seeing the world.

I’ve had experiences in foreign countries that profoundly shaped me. Experiences of warmth, generosity, openness, hospitality, community. Experiences where people welcomed me immediately, fed me before asking questions, called me sister, invited me into their homes, shared stories, traditions, laughter.

And yet sometimes I hesitate to speak openly about these experiences back home because I can already anticipate the reaction. The suspicion. The over-analysis. The assumption that appreciating another culture somehow means romanticizing it incorrectly, overlooking complexity, or saying the “wrong” thing.

Sometimes it feels as though people are more comfortable discussing cultures theoretically than emotionally.

But human connection is emotional.

Traveling taught me that people are rarely as simple as political discourse wants them to be. A country is never just its headlines. A culture is never just one narrative. People contain contradictions everywhere. Places contain beauty and problems simultaneously.

And yet modern conversations often leave very little room for that duality.

You either condemn entirely or celebrate entirely. You either belong to one side of a conversation or the other. You are either sufficiently critical or insufficiently aware.

There is very little space left for simply saying:
This was my experience.
This person was kind to me.
This place changed me.
I felt safe there.
I felt human there.

Without immediately feeling like you must attach ten disclaimers to prove you are educated enough to deserve your own memories.

And perhaps that is what I miss most: the ability to encounter each other openly before filtering every interaction through political performance.

Because ironically, some of the greatest openness I have experienced came not from hyper-progressive spaces obsessed with saying the correct thing, but from ordinary people living ordinary lives. People who welcomed difference naturally rather than academically.

I think about evenings spent with people whose political opinions, religions, or worldviews may have differed wildly from mine—and yet we sat together for hours sharing food, stories, jokes, music. Nobody was trying to “win” morally. Nobody was scanning conversations for mistakes. There was simply curiosity.

And curiosity feels endangered lately.

We have become incredibly good at categorizing each other and increasingly bad at listening.

There’s also something deeply exhausting about constantly self-monitoring every thought before expressing it. Every sentence becomes edited before it’s even spoken. Every opinion softened, qualified, rehearsed.

Not because we’ve necessarily become kinder—but because we’ve become afraid.

Afraid of being misunderstood.
Afraid of being judged publicly.
Afraid of saying something imperfectly.
Afraid that one poorly phrased sentence will define your entire character.

But human beings are imperfect communicators. We always have been.

Some of the most meaningful conversations happen not because everyone says everything flawlessly, but because people allow each other room to explain, clarify, grow, and learn.

Openness requires generosity.

And generosity seems increasingly rare in modern discourse.

Especially online, where people often approach conversations not with curiosity but with suspicion. As though everyone is secretly guilty until proven sufficiently self-aware.

But life itself has taught me something different.

The people who changed me most were often people entirely outside my own bubble. Different countries. Different upbringings. Different religions. Different lifestyles. Different generations.

And if I had approached all of them with ideological rigidity instead of openness, I would have missed some of the most beautiful moments of my life.

I would have missed conversations on beaches at midnight with strangers who became friends. Missed sitting in homes where I didn’t speak the language perfectly but understood warmth perfectly. Missed hearing perspectives shaped by realities entirely different from mine.

Traveling especially teaches you humility because it constantly reminds you that your way is not the only way.

And perhaps that’s why returning home can sometimes feel strangely claustrophobic. Not because home is bad—but because certain environments feel intellectually narrower than the world itself.

There’s a difference between being thoughtful and being performative. Between caring and policing. Between accountability and purity culture.

And I think many people are quietly longing for spaces where they can breathe again. Spaces where conversations can be imperfect but honest. Where people can disagree without immediately dehumanizing each other. Where experiences are allowed to exist without being cross-examined into oblivion.

Because the truth is: human beings were never meant to fit perfectly into ideological boxes.

We are shaped by places, encounters, contradictions, memories, relationships, and emotions. We carry experiences that don’t always translate neatly into political language.

And maybe openness is not about always agreeing.

Maybe it’s about remaining curious enough to let the world surprise you.

Maybe it’s about resisting the urge to flatten people into categories.

Maybe it’s about allowing complexity instead of fearing it.

And maybe the most radical thing left in a world obsessed with being correct is simply this:

To stay human.

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One day you’re still rushing through the streets with your shoulders hunched against the cold, wrapped in scarves and thick coats. And the next, the sky opens into that pale blue that only exists after winter, and the air feels lighter somehow. Not warm exactly—but promising.

And suddenly, the entire city spills outside.

Chairs appear on sidewalks again as if cafés have been waiting all winter for this exact moment. Tables fill within minutes. People sit outside even when it’s still a little too cold, coats draped over shoulders, sunglasses confidently in place as if they’ve been doing this all year. Someone orders an espresso, someone else an Aperol, someone laughs too loudly because it’s been months since anyone felt like lingering.

There’s something very European about these first sunny days. A kind of collective agreement that productivity can wait because the sun has returned and that, frankly, is more important.

You walk past café terraces full of people leaning into the light like sunflowers. Friends talking over small cups of coffee. Couples sharing fries. Someone reading a book with their face tilted toward the warmth. The energy of the city shifts overnight—from quiet endurance to something closer to celebration.

Spring has arrived. Or at least the idea of it.

March carries a strange kind of optimism. It’s the month where everything feels like it’s about to start again. Trees that looked completely lifeless just weeks ago suddenly show tiny green buds. Flower stalls appear on street corners again, overflowing with tulips in colors so bright they look almost theatrical—soft pinks, buttery yellows, deep reds.

You start noticing the smell of spring too. It’s subtle at first: fresh air moving through open windows, damp earth waking up in parks, the faint sweetness of flowers appearing in unexpected places. It’s the smell of the city stretching after months of cold.

And with this new energy comes the sudden urge to walk.

Not the rushed, head-down winter walking where you’re just trying to get somewhere quickly. These are the long, slow hot girl walks, preferably with friends, where the destination doesn’t really matter. You walk along rivers, through parks, down streets you’ve passed a thousand times but never really noticed.

You talk about everything and nothing at once.

About what everyone did during winter. About trips you want to take now that the world feels open again. About work frustrations and new ideas and the tiny dramas that make life entertaining. Sometimes you stop to admire the first blossoms on trees. Sometimes someone insists on taking a picture because “the light is so pretty right now.”

Hours pass without anyone noticing.

The beauty of these walks isn’t the walking itself—it’s the catching up. Winter has a way of making everyone retreat a little, into apartments and routines and early nights. Spring pulls everyone back out again.

Friendships come back to life in sunlight.

You realize how much you missed these moments: walking side by side, talking without a clock hovering over you, stopping in a park because someone spotted a dog or a particularly beautiful tree. The conversations feel lighter somehow, carried by the fresh air.

And everywhere, nature is quietly doing its thing.

Trees are blooming like they’ve been waiting months to show off. Parks suddenly fill with people sitting in the grass, jackets tossed aside. Tulips stand confidently in flower beds as if they know they’re the stars of the season.

Spring doesn’t arrive quietly—it unfolds.

And somehow it always comes with the urge to reset.

Maybe it’s the sunlight streaming through windows that reveals just how much dust accumulated over winter. Maybe it’s the feeling that if the world outside is starting fresh, your apartment should too. But suddenly everyone is opening windows, airing out rooms, sorting through closets.

Spring cleaning begins.

You fold away thick sweaters that carried you through winter and replace them with lighter clothes. You donate things you no longer need. You wipe down shelves, reorganize books, water plants you may have neglected slightly during darker months.

It’s not just about cleaning—it’s about making space.

Space for lighter days. Space for new routines. Space for the version of yourself that tends to show up when the sun returns.

Because spring does something subtle to people. It makes them hopeful again.

Plans start forming almost accidentally. Someone suggests a picnic “one of these days.” Someone else wants to go to the lake or the countryside soon. Suddenly everyone is talking about weekend trips and dinners outside and long evenings that stretch until the sky turns pink.

Winter was about surviving.

Spring is about living again.

And maybe that’s why these first days of sun feel so special. They’re not summer yet. There’s still a little chill in the air. But that makes the warmth feel even more precious. People linger outside longer than necessary because they know how fleeting this first taste of spring can be.

You sit with friends on a café terrace, sunlight warming your face, tulips in a glass vase on the table.

You talk, you laugh, you plan walks and dinners and trips that may or may not happen.

And for a moment, everything feels wonderfully simple.

The sun is out.
Your friends are beside you.
Spring has arrived.

And life, finally, is happening outside again. 🌷

There’s something slightly chaotic about being a woman. One minute you’re confidently giving advice to a friend about life, love, and boundaries over coffee, the next you’re googling something existential like “how to feel like a real adult” while eating pasta out of a pot. Womanhood often feels like a mixture of confidence and questioning, strength and softness, ambition and occasional existential spirals.

And maybe that’s exactly why International Women’s Day exists. Not only to celebrate the polished, powerful versions of women we see on stages and in headlines, but also the millions of quieter stories that shape the world every single day. The resilience. The reinvention. The constant rewriting of what it means to be a woman.

Because every woman today is walking along paths that were cleared, widened, or sometimes fought for by women before her.

Take Dolly Parton, for example. She’s often remembered for the sparkle—big hair, rhinestones, the voice that can fill a stadium—but the most remarkable part of her legacy might be something far quieter. Through the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, she has given millions of children free books, simply because she believes every child deserves access to stories. In a world obsessed with grand gestures, Dolly chose something deceptively simple: literacy, imagination, possibility.

And somehow that feels very womanly in the best sense of the word—power paired with care, success paired with generosity.

Then there’s Whoopi Goldberg, whose career has never followed anyone else’s script. Comedian, actor, television host, cultural commentator—she’s spent decades speaking her mind in rooms that weren’t always welcoming. She’s one of the few entertainers to achieve EGOT status, but more importantly, she carved out space for humor that doesn’t ask permission. Her voice reminds us that women, particularly women of color, have long had to invent their own platforms when none existed.

Of course, women have been shaping culture for centuries, often in quieter ways. Long before social media, before bestseller lists dominated publishing conversations, there was Jane Austen, writing novels at a small desk in rural England. Her books—about love, society, money, and independence—are still being read more than two hundred years later. Austen understood something that remains true today: that the emotional lives of women are worthy of literature, complexity, humor, and scrutiny.

Her heroines were not passive dreamers. They observed the world carefully. They questioned expectations. They made mistakes and learned from them. In other words, they felt very real.

But womanhood is not only about creativity and resilience—it is also about confronting the darker parts of our societies.

Sometimes the stories that define an era are not the ones we celebrate, but the ones that force us to reckon with injustice. The case of Dominique Pelicot, which shocked France and the world, became a reminder of the courage it takes for women to speak out against violence and exploitation. These stories are painful, but they also illuminate the strength of survivors and the importance of listening when women tell their truths.

Progress has never been a straight line. It moves in waves—advances followed by resistance, victories followed by new battles.

And yet, across centuries and cultures, women have continued to shape the world in ways both visible and invisible.

Some become artists, scientists, or activists whose names echo through history. Others change the trajectory of a single life—a teacher who encourages a student to believe in her voice, a friend who reminds you of your strength during heartbreak, a mother who quietly sacrifices so her children can dream bigger than she was allowed to.

These everyday acts of care rarely make headlines. But they build the emotional infrastructure of the world.

Being a woman today means inhabiting a strange, beautiful moment in history. On one hand, opportunities have expanded dramatically. Women lead governments, companies, scientific breakthroughs, and cultural movements. On the other hand, many challenges remain—inequality, violence, unrealistic expectations, and the constant pressure to balance roles that were never meant to be carried alone.

And yet women continue to adapt, resist, create, and rebuild.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about women is their capacity for reinvention. Women have always found ways to expand the definitions placed upon them. A singer becomes a philanthropist. A writer becomes a cultural icon. A comedian becomes a political voice. A survivor becomes an advocate.

The story of womanhood has never been singular.

It is thousands of overlapping stories—some loud, some quiet, some joyful, some painful, but all deeply human.

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate the obvious icons, yes. But we also celebrate the everyday bravery of women navigating their lives with dignity, humor, and resilience. The ones building careers. The ones starting over. The ones choosing independence. The ones raising children. The ones creating art. The ones simply refusing to become smaller than the world expects them to be.

And maybe that’s the real meaning of the day.

Not perfection.
Not pressure.
But recognition.

Recognition that the story of women is still being written, and that every woman—whether she’s writing novels like Jane Austen, building literacy programs like Dolly Parton, challenging the status quo like Whoopi Goldberg, or simply living her life with courage—is contributing to that story.

Womanhood is not a finished identity.

It is something we grow into, question, reshape, and carry forward.

And perhaps the most beautiful part is that no woman walks that journey entirely alone.

We live in a time where nonchalance is currency. Where the highest emotional achievement seems to be not wanting too much. Where we are praised for being independent, unbothered, low-maintenance. Where loving lightly feels safer than loving deeply, because depth implies risk — and risk implies heartbreak. So we soften our desires into jokes. We say, “I’m just seeing where things go.” We act like clarity is uncool and hope is embarrassing.

And yet.

Some of us have always wanted love in full sentences. Not the half-defined, maybe-someday, let’s-not-label-this kind. But the kind that shows up consistently. The kind that chooses you even when it’s inconvenient. The kind that knows your order, your moods, your silences. The kind of love that feels less like guessing and more like landing. Wanting that kind of love can feel strangely rebellious. Because it requires honesty in a world that rewards ambiguity. It requires saying this matters to me without knowing how it will be received. It requires trusting your own softness, even when the culture around you treats it like a liability.

And in spring, that longing becomes harder to ignore.

You see it in the way people linger over drinks instead of rushing home. In hands brushing across café tables, in glances held a second too long, in conversations that stretch into golden hour without anyone checking the time. You start imagining small, ordinary futures — not grand gestures, but shared routines. Someone to walk home with as the air cools. Someone to sit beside on a park bench, watching the world move. Someone who knows your stories so well you don’t have to finish them. Not because you’re incomplete without them — but because life feels fuller when it’s shared.

Still, there’s that voice — internal or cultural — that tells you to tone it down. To be cool about it. To act like you’d be just as happy alone. To pretend that wanting love is naïve or old-fashioned.

But here’s the quiet truth: loving out loud has always been brave.

It’s brave to say you want to be chosen. It’s brave to admit you want something real, something lasting, something mutual. It’s brave to want more than almosts and placeholders. It’s brave to believe that you deserve a love that feels like safety and excitement all at once. A love that doesn’t keep you guessing. A love that meets you where you are, not halfway, not someday, but now.

Romantic films understand this — not just the holiday ones, but the spring ones too. They don’t mock the longing; they celebrate it. They know that love is awkward and ill-timed and imperfect and still worth pursuing. That sometimes the bravest thing you can do is say the thing you’re afraid to say. That sometimes love arrives quietly, disguised as a conversation that lingers or a feeling that refuses to be casual.

Real life, of course, is messier. There are no guarantees. No swelling soundtracks timed to perfection. Sometimes loving out loud means being disappointed. Sometimes it means waiting longer than you’d like. Sometimes it means walking away from situations that never quite meet you where you stand.

But it also means living honestly.

It means choosing depth over detachment. Warmth over irony. Presence over performance. It means believing that your capacity for love is not something to minimize, but something to honor. And during this season — when the world is blooming again, when the air feels lighter, when everything seems to whisper begin — it’s okay to let yourself want what you want. To hope. To imagine. To believe that a love that meets you fully is not asking too much.

Maybe loving out loud doesn’t mean grand declarations. Maybe it simply means refusing to dim your desires to make them more palatable. Maybe it means trusting that the right love will never ask you to pretend you don’t care.

So if you find yourself feeling more tender this spring, more open, more aware of the space beside you — let that be okay. Let yourself want the love that feels like fresh air after a long winter. The love that feels like staying. The love that doesn’t require you to play it cool.

Because in a world obsessed with emotional restraint, choosing to love — openly, honestly, and without apology — might just be the most radical, beautiful thing you can do.

And who knows? Spring has a way of surprising us. Sometimes, love arrives right when you stop pretending you don’t want it.

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This is the paradox that so many of us experience but rarely have the words to describe. It’s lying in bed at night, exhausted, but your brain has decided it’s the perfect time to play a greatest hits reel of every mistake, every “what if,” and every unfinished to-do list. It’s standing in the shower, staring blankly at the tile, unsure of how long you’ve been there, lost in thoughts that don’t seem to be going anywhere at all.

And maybe the most frustrating part of it all is this: if someone asked you, “What’s wrong?” you wouldn’t have a concrete answer. Because nothing’s wrong, exactly. But something is undeniably off. It’s as if your mind is trying to process everything and nothing at the same time. The hum of overstimulation colliding with the dull ache of emptiness.

So what do you do when the silence becomes too loud?

You reach for the music.

Not just for entertainment, but as an anchor. Music becomes the soft, padded wall between you and the raw edges of your own mind. The steady rhythm, the lyrics you’ve memorized, the melody that tells you, you’re not alone in this. You put on a playlist and suddenly the echo chamber quiets just enough for you to breathe. There’s comfort in the beat, in the structure, in the predictability. It gives shape to the shapelessness. It tethers you to the moment, even if just for a few minutes.

Music, in these moments, feels like survival. Not in the dramatic sense — not life or death — but in the way a cup of tea warms cold hands. In the way a familiar scent can pull you back to safety. It’s small, but vital. Necessary in its own quiet way.

And it’s not just music — it’s anything that fills the quiet. A podcast, the background chatter of a café, a rerun of a sitcom you’ve seen a hundred times. It’s not about distraction for the sake of avoidance — it’s about companionship. Noise, in this context, becomes a buffer. It keeps the overthinking at bay, not because you’re running from it, but because sometimes your mind just needs a gentle nudge away from the spiral.

But still, there’s a lingering guilt. Shouldn’t we be able to sit in silence with ourselves? Shouldn’t we be able to meditate, or journal, or think clearly without the aid of a Spotify playlist or the hum of a YouTube video? The internet is full of self-help mantras urging us to “be still” and “embrace the quiet,” but that advice doesn’t always hold when your brain turns the quiet into a storm.

So here’s the truth that many of us need to hear: it’s okay if silence doesn’t feel peaceful right now. It’s okay if your brain needs a little background music to find its way. Maybe one day, you’ll be able to sit in silence and feel soothed. But until then, it’s perfectly valid to create your own kind of peace.

Because sometimes healing doesn’t look like sitting cross-legged in total stillness. Sometimes it looks like lying on your floor with your favorite song on repeat. It looks like filling your room with sound so that you can finally quiet the noise inside your head.

There is no shame in needing that. There is no weakness in craving that. In a world that rarely slows down, where our minds are constantly pulled in every direction, you are allowed to seek refuge in the things that keep you grounded — even if those things come with a volume dial.

Let your music play. Let the noise soothe. And know that you are not alone in this paradox of too much and not enough. We’re all just trying to find a little calm in the chaos.

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Dating in your twenties feels like a social experiment where the rules keep changing. One minute you’re swapping life stories with someone over a cheeky glass of wine, the next you’re ghosted without explanation. There are swipe-right romances that last a week, holiday flings that make you question if you’re living in the right country, long-distance almost-relationships, and the occasional person who makes you rethink every cynicism you’ve ever had about love. It’s messy and magical all at once. You learn that heartbreak isn’t the end of the world—even if it feels like it—it’s a strange badge of honor, proof that you’ve cared enough to risk it. You also learn that love isn’t only about fireworks; it’s in the quieter gestures: someone remembering your coffee order, texting to check if you got home safe, or making you laugh on a Tuesday night when the week feels heavy.

Meanwhile, everyone keeps asking where you see yourself in five years, as if you have a crystal ball. Five years feels like an eternity. The truth? Some days you’re on fire—landing internships, booking trips to places you’ve always wanted to go, feeling utterly unstoppable. Other days you forget to pay the electricity bill and eat cereal for dinner because it’s Sunday and the grocery store is closed. That’s the dance of it: ambition and chaos, side by side. You discover that careers aren’t always linear. The “dream job” might be a stepping stone or a total disaster. The version of success you imagined at eighteen will shapeshift a hundred times before you’re thirty—and that’s okay. Part of the magic of your twenties is trying things, failing spectacularly, and surprising yourself with what sticks.

If romantic relationships are the plot twists, friendships are the spine of the story. Your friends are the people you call at midnight to dissect a date, the ones who drag you out dancing when you’d rather wallow, the ones who sit on the floor of your apartment with wine and snacks and remind you who you are when the world feels shaky. These friendships are the love affairs that often outlast everything else. They’re proof that soulmates aren’t always romantic; sometimes they’re the people who hold your hair back after a bad decision or send you memes at exactly the right moment. They shape your life in quiet, persistent ways: the ones you meet every Monday to watch the sneak preview in your favorite cinema, turning an ordinary weeknight into a ritual of popcorn, whispered commentary, and inside jokes that linger long after the credits roll. They’re the voices that fill your lunch breaks with laughter so big it spills out into the street, the reason a random Wednesday can feel like a celebration.

Friendships like these weave themselves into the mundane until the mundane becomes sacred. They’re the spontaneous road trips that start with a text that simply says want to get lost? They’re the early-morning coffee runs after a night of too little sleep, when someone shows up with a latte and a grin because they know exactly what you need without asking. They’re the shared playlists, the group chats that light up at 2 a.m., the silent understanding when words aren’t enough.

These are the people who see every version of you—the triumphant, the heartbroken, the messy, the hopeful—and never flinch. They hold space for your wild ideas and your quiet doubts. They remember the names of people you’ve loved and the things you’ve lost. They keep a mental catalog of your favorite snacks, your worst fears, and the moments when you need a hug more than advice. Years from now, when romantic stories have come and gone, these friendships will stand like landmarks in the landscape of your life. They’re the steady heartbeat beneath the plot twists, the constant that gives the story meaning. They don’t just make life bearable; they make it luminous.

And maybe that’s why, even when everything else feels uncertain, you start to realize that the beauty of this chapter lies in its unpredictability. The people, the plans, the detours—they all unfold in ways you never saw coming. Remember all those plans you made as a teenager? Married by twenty-five. Dream career by twenty-seven. A chic apartment with matching dishes. Now you’re laughing, right? The truth is that timelines are fiction. Life doesn’t unfold in perfect Pinterest boards—it spills, detours, and occasionally crashes into something better than you could’ve scripted.

Maybe you’ll end up in a high-rise with floor-to-ceiling windows, running a company you built from scratch, the city lights glittering beneath you like a private constellation. Or maybe you’ll be the surfer living in a small beach front house, running your own café where the espresso is strong, the mornings smell of sea salt, and time is measured by tides instead of clocks. Either way, it’s still a life—full, vivid, and entirely yours. The point isn’t to reach some predetermined destination; it’s to follow the twists and detours that feel alive, even when they look nothing like the plan you once sketched in the margins of a high-school notebook.

Somewhere along the way you start to see that the “shoulds” are just noise. You don’t have to be in a relationship. You don’t have to climb a career ladder at breakneck speed. You don’t have to know what you’re doing. The only requirement is to keep showing up for your own life, even when it’s confusing, even when it’s not Instagram-pretty. The pressure to tick boxes—house, spouse, steady paycheck—slowly gives way to something richer: the freedom to decide for yourself what a good life actually means.

Here’s the secret no one tells you: the uncertainty is the best part. These years are a wild cocktail of freedom and fear, and you’ll never be quite this untethered again. You can move cities on a whim, change jobs, fall in and out of love, and reinvent yourself as many times as you like. You can spend a year in a tiny sublet, live out of a backpack, or start over in a city where no one knows your name. You can quit a job that drains you, pick up a side hustle that thrills you, or study something completely unrelated to your degree just because it sparks your curiosity.

So say yes to the spontaneous trip, the late-night heart-to-hearts, the awkward first dates, the bold career leaps. Stay up too late swapping stories on a friend’s balcony. Get lost on purpose. Make mistakes. Laugh too loudly. Cry in public if you need to. Buy the sparkly shoes even if they’re impractical. Take the class you’ve always been curious about, even if you feel ridiculous. Write the novel that might never get published. Learn the language just because the words feel good in your mouth.

Because one day, when life is a little more settled and the edges feel softer, you’ll look back at this messy, sparkling chapter and realize these were the years you became the person you were always meant to be—one adventure, one heartbreak, one perfectly imperfect moment at a time. These are the years that teach you to trust your own voice, to make peace with uncertainty, and to discover that the best timeline is the one you write as you go.