We do not speak the same way to everyone. With some, our voices soften, careful and measured. With others, we are louder, more certain, unafraid of being misunderstood. Our words shift, our tone adapts, our sentences rearrange themselves depending on who is listening. There are people with whom we are our truest selves, unguarded, unfiltered, speaking without the need to explain. And then there are those with whom we edit, choosing words carefully, adjusting our truths to fit the space they allow. It is not always deception; sometimes, it is survival. Sometimes, it is simply habit. We even do this with ourselves. The way we speak in our minds, the way we narrate our own lives, it changes depending on what we believe in that moment. Some days, we tell ourselves we are capable. Other days, we tell ourselves we are not enough. The voice inside us, just like the voice we share with the world, is always shifting. But who are we beneath all the adjustments? When no one is listening, when there is no need to explain, no need to be anything but real, what do we sound like then? And how often do we let that voice be heard?
They don’t care about job titles, unfinished inboxes, or carefully rehearsed competence. They don’t even care about names. The desert looks the way the ocean looks, the way the night sky looks. Not cruelly. Not kindly. Simply.
And that simplicity feels like mercy.
In Mleiha, at that hour when the sun is tired and generous, the sand turns into a quiet instrument. Every step writes something that will not be preserved. Every footprint is a sentence the wind is already preparing to erase.
Netta is holding Ehan’s arm as they climb a dune that isn’t steep, exactly, but feels like it is because the sand refuses to stay put. It slides under small shoes and adult soles as if to remind me: nothing here is meant to be owned, not even balance.
From a distance they are silhouettes. A mother leaning forward. A child lifting his leg with the seriousness of a mission. The sky is wide enough to make even brave thoughts feel smaller. The clouds are soft, almost careless. And somewhere far behind them, thin metal towers hold their straight lines against all that natural curve, as if humanity is always trying to prove it can draw a ruler across a world that was never built for it.
That contrast feels like the story I keep living.
Certainty gets built. Schedules. Systems. Plans. Power gets strung through emptiness and is called progress. Life gets compressed into tasks and outcomes, as if being alive is a problem that can be solved.
But the sand doesn’t agree.
The sand makes honesty unavoidable.
In one of my earlier reflections, I wrote about the freedom of feeling like a grain of sand. That freedom isn’t the kind I usually chase. It isn’t loud. It doesn’t come with achievement. It doesn’t raise the heart rate in the way ambition does.
It is the freedom of being released from the burden of importance.
A grain of sand doesn’t have to be exceptional to be real. It doesn’t have to be noticed to be necessary. It belongs without performing. It is part of something vast without needing to be the reason for it. And when that is allowed to be felt—truly felt—something inside unclenches.
Because so much suffering comes from insisting on mattering in a specific, measurable way.
The desert offers a different kind of mattering.
It suggests: I matter because I am here. Because I feel. Because I can hold a small hand and walk forward.
Looking at them on that dune, nothing grand is being announced. No staged heroism. Just movement. Just care. Just a shared leaning into the next step.
And yet it feels like a universe-sized act.
Maybe because it is.
Parenthood is like that. It doesn’t always look monumental from the outside. It looks like adjusting a sleeve. Like holding an elbow. Like slowing down because the legs beside mine are shorter. Like allowing a child to lead, even when the route is known.
But inside that ordinary tenderness is something rare: the decision to become a living shelter.
Netta’s hand on Ehan’s arm isn’t just guidance. It is an unspoken promise:
He can walk into the world. I am here. The ground may shift. I won’t.
And Ehan, doing what children do so naturally, isn’t thinking about symbolism or philosophy. He is simply stepping into his own scale of adventure. A dune becomes a mountain when someone is small. A horizon becomes a question. A sunset becomes a quiet applause for effort.
Adults forget this. I forget how to let a moment be enough.
Everything keeps trying to become a conclusion.
But the desert doesn’t do conclusions. It does continuity. It does repetition with variation. Dune after dune after dune, shaped by the same wind that shaped the last one, yet never identical.
That feels like another kind of freedom: being shaped and still remaining whole.
Being changed by what has been lived, and still being oneself.
This truth gets resisted because smallness is often treated like a flaw. As if small means powerless, invisible, insignificant. As if the only escape from smallness is becoming louder, bigger, more “successful.”
But smallness isn’t a sentence.
Smallness is a doorway.
In the desert, smallness feels accurate. And accuracy can be comforting. It means control can stop being pretended. It means certainty doesn’t have to be engineered into existence. It means the universe doesn’t need to obey a calendar.
It becomes possible to admit: I am one person on one dune on one evening in a world that will outlast me.
And somehow, instead of despair, something tender rises.
Gratitude.
Because if I am that small, then I don’t have to carry the whole world on my shoulders. I only have to carry what is mine to carry: a hand, a moment, a love, a step.
There’s something else in the edges of the photo too.
The sun is setting. Which means the light is leaving. Which means this scene is already becoming memory even as it happens.
That’s the quiet heartbreak of being human: living inside things that won’t stay.
And still loving. Still walking. Still holding arms and hands, even with the knowledge that time is a wind that never takes a day off.
Maybe that’s the deepest courage.
Not conquest. Not domination. Not mastery.
But presence.
To stand on a dune with people I love and allow myself to feel how temporary it all is—and still choose to be fully there. Still choose warmth. Still choose care. Still choose the next step.
A grain of sand cannot stop the wind. It doesn’t protest the sky. It doesn’t argue with the sun about setting too soon.
It simply exists. It belongs. It participates.
And when enough grains gather, they become a landscape that can hold a mother and a child and a moment that makes an observer pause and feel something honest.
So maybe that’s what freedom looks like.
Not the freedom of being untouchable.
But the freedom of being small enough to be real.
Small enough to be part of something wide.
Small enough to stop fighting the vastness and start letting it heal.
On that dune in Mleiha, with the sky opening like a slow breath, Netta and Ehan aren’t trying to prove anything.
They are simply walking.
And the desert..patient, enormous, and quietly wise…lets them.
There are versions of our lives that exist only in the space of almost. The job we nearly took. The city we almost moved to. The love we hesitated to pursue. These lives do not belong to us, yet they linger in the background, shadows of what could have been. It is tempting to wonder about them. To trace the outlines of choices left unmade. Would we be happier? Would we be different? Would we recognize the person we might have become? But the truth is, we can never live every version of ourselves. For every door we walk through, there are others that remain closed. And maybe that is not a loss, but a quiet kind of grace because the life we are living now is the only one unfolding in real time. Perhaps the lives that almost happened are not meant to haunt us, but to remind us that we are always standing at the edge of possibility. That even now, in this moment, there are paths ahead we cannot yet see.And maybe, one day, we’ll look back and realize the life we stepped into was the right one all along.
My son is pressed toward the oval window like it is a secret portal the world forgot to lock.
There is something holy about the way children look outside an airplane. Not curious in the noisy way adults are curious. Not trying to capture it, not trying to explain it, not trying to turn it into proof. He is simply there, leaning into the light, letting the sky arrive in him without resistance.
The cabin around us is a small mechanical universe. Plastic edges. A screen that knows how to entertain. Trays and latches and polite instructions. Everything is designed to make travel efficient, controlled, predictable. Yet his gaze refuses that architecture. His eyes keep returning to the one soft, ancient element that cannot be managed: open space.
This is what moves me.
Because I realise how much of adulthood is spent building inner cabins. We create routines, boundaries, strategies. We learn to fold ourselves into seats that fit. We learn to keep our feet within the lines. We learn to be useful, to be correct, to be timely. Over time, even wonder becomes scheduled. Even joy gets a slot between meetings.
But my son has not learned any of that yet. He does not know the weight of deadlines. He does not know the silent negotiations inside a grown man’s chest. He does not know the language of worry that adults speak fluently without moving their lips. He has not inherited the habit of looking at the world and immediately asking, “What does this mean for me?”
He only looks.
And in that looking, he reminds me of something I keep misplacing.
That the world is not a problem to solve. It is a presence to meet.
When I watch him, I begin to understand the window as more than a piece of glass. It is a border. Not the kind that separates countries, but the kind that separates states of being. On one side, a child who still belongs to the wide open. On the other, a parent who is always tempted to reduce the wide open into plans and precautions.
The window is also a mirror, if I let it be. I see my own life as a sequence of departures.
Leaving childhood without knowing I was leaving it.
Leaving friends with the confidence that time would wait.
Leaving places I swore I would return to, then discovering that return is never a perfect circle. You go back, but you are not the same person. The streets are familiar, but your inner weather has changed.
Maybe that is what travel really does. It does not merely move our bodies across distances. It exposes how often our hearts live in the wrong time zone.
My son, meanwhile, is perfectly timed.
He looks out at a sky that offers no promises. No fences. No signboards. Only a vast, indifferent beauty. And he is not intimidated by it. He does not ask the sky to shrink into something comfortable. He does not demand that it be useful. He simply allows it to be enormous.
I envy that. I need that.
Because there is a quiet fear adults carry, even when everything is fine. A fear that life is slipping forward faster than we can hold it. That our children are growing in increments too small to notice, until one day a voice deepens, a hand becomes larger than ours, and the doorway suddenly looks different because they are almost tall enough to leave.
In this moment, his legs are stretched toward the seat in front, shoes slightly too big for his small frame, as if even his body is practicing for the future. I want to freeze time, not because I am unhappy with what is coming, but because I am stunned by how quickly love evolves. It begins as protection. It becomes guidance. Then one day, it becomes a blessing you give from a distance.
Parenthood with all my imperfectness is the art of holding and releasing at the same time.
Maybe that is why this scene pierces me. This is not just my son looking out at clouds. This is my heart rehearsing the day he will look out at the world without me sitting beside him. The day he will be the one in motion, and I will be the one waving from the ground, pretending my smile is enough.
Yet I also feel something gentler beneath the ache.
Gratitude.
That I get to witness this version of him.
That I get to sit close enough to hear his quiet breathing while the world rearranges itself outside.
That I get to learn, again and again, from someone who has not yet been trained to doubt beauty.
I do not know what he is thinking as he looks out. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Perhaps he is not thinking at all, only receiving. And perhaps that is the highest form of intelligence we forget as we grow older: the ability to be moved without needing to own the reason.
The sky will not remember this flight. The clouds will not keep our names.
But I will remember this.
The small head turned toward light.
The way wonder can live in a seatbelt.
The way a child can turn a simple window into a doorway back to what is true.
And as the plane continues forward, I make a quiet promise to myself.
To not rush past moments like this.
To let his wonder educate my tired adulthood.
To look out more often, even when there is no window.
Because sometimes, the most profound journeys are not the miles we travel, but the return we make to a gaze that is still capable of awe.
There are times in life when we drift, away from who we were, away from the things that once made us feel alive. It happens quietly, unnoticed at first. We become caught in routines, pulled by expectations, shaped by the world around us. One day, we wake up and realize we feel distant from ourselves, as if we have stepped into a life that does not quite fit. But the beautiful thing about being lost is that there are always roads that lead us back. A forgotten hobby that sparks something in us again. A song that reminds us of who we used to be. A conversation that reignites a part of us we thought we had left behind. Coming back to ourselves is not always easy. It requires stillness. It requires listening, to the quiet voice beneath the noise, the one that has always known what we need. Sometimes, it means letting go of what no longer feels true. Sometimes, it means choosing things not because they are practical, but because they make us feel alive again. And perhaps that is the journey we are all on, not becoming someone new, but remembering who we were before the world told us who to be. Finding our way back, step by step, to the person who has been waiting for us all along. Now you know, why I keep on coming back to the blog : )
We wait for big moments to celebrate, birthdays, promotions, milestones. But life is full of smaller victories, quiet wins that pass unnoticed simply because they don’t come with applause. Getting through a difficult day. Speaking up when it wasn’t easy. Choosing to be kind when it would have been simpler to walk away. Letting go of something that was never meant for you. These moments are just as worthy of recognition, just as significant, even if no one else sees them. We underestimate the importance of the everyday triumphs. The small steps that lead to bigger change. The decisions we make, the patience we practice, the resilience we show in the face of uncertainty. We think we have to wait for something grand to feel proud, but growth happens in the moments that seem ordinary. So pause. Acknowledge the things you have overcome. The fears you have faced. The times you chose to keep going when you could have given up. You have come further than you think. Not all victories need a stage. Some are quiet, personal, known only to you. And that doesn’t make them any less worth celebrating.
There are things we keep tucked away, waiting for the right moment. A bottle of perfume only used on rare nights. A set of dishes meant for guests who never arrive. A favorite outfit hanging untouched, saved for an occasion that never quite comes. We do this not just with objects, but with experiences. We hold back joy, telling ourselves we will take the trip one day. That we will celebrate when we have achieved enough. That we will allow ourselves rest when we have earned it. We wait for milestones, for permission, for some unspoken rule that tells us it is finally time. But what if today is reason enough? What if the special occasion we are waiting for is simply being alive? The perfume will not lose its value if worn on an ordinary afternoon. The beautiful things we own are no less beautiful if used without ceremony. Joy does not need to be reserved for a perfect future, it is meant to be lived now, in the imperfect, unscripted, fleeting moments of today. Because if we keep waiting for the right time, we may find that by the time it arrives, we have forgotten how to enjoy the very things we once saved.
I’m someone who like to rearrange things often. There’s something deeply human about the urge to move things around. A chair angled differently. A table placed under new light. A shelf cleared, then filled again. Rearranging furniture may seem like a practical act, but often, it reflects something more..an inner shift we can’t quite name. We do it when we feel stuck. When seasons change. After a heartbreak. Before a new chapter. It’s a physical way of saying: I need something to feel different, even if just slightly. And it works. The room feels new, and so do we, if only a little. These small changes are our way of reasserting agency. Of creating motion when life feels still. Of turning space into a canvas that mirrors the version of ourselves we’re becoming. Sometimes, moving a lamp or opening up a corner feels like opening something inside us too. It’s not about perfection. It’s about resonance. A room that reflects our now, not our before. A quiet alignment between our environment and our evolving selves. And so we move the couch. We stack the books differently. We face the bed toward the morning light. Not because it changes the world, but because it reminds us that we can.
The world changes when the sun goes down. The same streets, the same rooms, the same sky, all take on a different weight in the quiet of the night. Sounds stretch longer, thoughts grow louder, and everything feels just a little more raw, a little more real. At night, we feel things we push aside during the day. Regrets resurface. Longing sharpens. Memories become clearer, more vivid, as if the dark makes space for the things we have been avoiding. The questions we ignore in daylight come knocking, asking to be heard. But night is not just a time for heavy thoughts. It is also when ideas come alive, when creativity stirs, when solitude feels less like loneliness and more like possibility. There is a softness to the night, an intimacy in the way it wraps around us, making room for reflection, for stillness, for things that don’t need to be spoken aloud. And then, just as quietly as it arrived, night fades. The sky lightens, the world wakes up, and everything that felt so intense under the moon begins to soften in the light. What seemed impossible in the dark suddenly feels manageable again. Maybe that is the gift of the night, it allows us to feel deeply, but it does not ask us to carry it forever. Because no matter how heavy the night feels, morning always comes.
Some things are so constant that we forget to appreciate them, until they are no longer there. The hum of a refrigerator filling the silence of a home. The way streetlights flicker on at dusk, unnoticed until we find ourselves in unfamiliar darkness. The comfort of knowing a certain person is always just a call away, until one day, they aren’t. We do not mean to take these things for granted. We simply assume they will always be there, woven into the background of our days. We forget that stability is not a promise, that even the most ordinary parts of life are temporary in their own way. It is only in absence that we recognize presence. Only in stillness that we realize what once filled the space. A favorite café that closes down. A routine that quietly disappears. The warmth of a familiar voice that we replay in our minds, wishing we had listened more carefully when we had the chance. Maybe the lesson is not to live in fear of loss, but to notice what is here now. To appreciate the things that seem unremarkable. To be present with the people we assume will always be around. Because one day, the ordinary things we overlook may be the very things we miss the most.
