The House That Others Built stood in the center of a thought the other day, a heavy, dark thought about duty and sacrifice, and I suddenly asked myself: "Who put this here?" It was a strange sensation, like walking into your own living room and realizing the furniture has been rearranged by a stranger. I looked closely at this belief—the conviction that suffering is a necessary component of worth—and I realized it didn't look like me. It didn't sound like me. It was an old, w

I have been thinking lately about the structures we inhabit. I don’t mean the brick and mortar of our apartments or the glass and steel of our offices. I mean the invisible, sprawling labyrinth of the self. We spend every waking moment inside the architecture of our own minds, walking down corridors of habit, looking out through windows of perception, and sheltering under roofs of belief. Yet, how often do we stop to look at the blueprints? Most of us are living in houses we

But mono no aware  suggests that the defect is not in the dying, but in our expectation of permanence. I found myself watching the light shift across the wall this evening. It wasn't a spectacular sunset, just the ordinary, quiet retreat of the day. The golden rectangle on the plaster slowly stretched, turned a dusty orange, and then dissolved into the grey of twilight. It happened in silence. It happened without fanfare. And as the light vanished, I felt a strange, distinct

I walked through the city center this morning. It was a sensory assault. The skyscrapers screamed for attention with their flashing billboards, the traffic roared its impatience, and the cafes spilled over with people shouting to be heard over the music. It occurred to me then, with the force of a physical blow: I am walking through a world that was not built for me. We live in a reality designed by the extroverts, for the extroverts. Look around you. Everything tangible—the

This New Year is just another point in our life It is December again. The air has shifted, carrying that distinct, crisp weight that signals the end of something long and arduous. I sat by my window this morning, watching the world rush by, and I felt that familiar hum of electricity that seems to wake up the world in this final month. We treat December like a grand finale. It is the closing act, the curtain call, the final few pages of a thick novel. There is a frenetic ener

I thought I knew how to swim. It was a skill I acquired as a child, a simple mechanical memory stored away in my muscles. So today, when...

They need to know where the morning sun should fall I have always been fascinated by architects. Not just for the grand cathedrals or...

I saw a monarch butterfly on a hibiscus flower this morning, its wings like a stained-glass window in the sun. For the longest time, I believed personal change was about addition. I thought it was about acquiring a new skill or a better habit, that I could just staple wings onto my old self and somehow learn to fly.