In life's race out of millions: relieved are the ones who did not wake up one morning; Blessed are the ones who woke up in the morning; Happy and Motivated are the ones who wake up beside loved ones. Brave, Courageous, self-driven are those who wake up single :-)

Cheers to All — and cheers to me, waking up alone for several years with no regrets :-) Yet, I deeply understand and cherish the value of being with a loved one.

"Pani Paata Leda" — a phrase used so casually, and yet my whole life has become it. Interesting how it never feels convenient. Pani (Work/Responsbilities) Prema (Love/Passion) Paata (Song) Passion.

I still haven't understood when "Pani" became "Prema", or when "Pani" pushed "Prema" away. I don't know how to begin closing that distance. So, until that distance is covered…a pause.

Perhaps, somewhere between them, I will understand what was lost, what remained, and what is still waiting to be lived.

The ambition is enormous. The days are ordinary. Living in the gap between the two.

There are days when the mind is full of plans — clear, detailed, almost certain. And then there are the actual days, which look nothing like the plans.

I have been living in that gap for a while now. Maybe you have too.

At some point, I stopped being easy to find. Not because I disappeared — but because I stopped showing up the way I used to.

There's a version of withdrawal that looks like strength from the outside. You become quieter. More self-contained. People say you seem calmer.

What they don't see is that you've just stopped expecting things to land.

There's a particular kind of loss that comes without a goodbye. Someone simply becomes less present, and you're left holding the question of why.

You replay conversations. You look for the moment things shifted. You wonder if you said something, or didn't say something, or were simply too much, or not enough.

And eventually you have to sit with the possibility that you may never know.

There comes a point in life when saying "I'm fine" becomes more tiring than admitting that you are not.

For years, I thought being fine meant being strong.

It meant getting up when something inside wanted to stay down. It meant answering calls when there was no energy left to speak. It meant continuing to work when the mind was exhausted. It meant forgiving things that were never properly explained. It meant smiling because there were people depending on you, even when you had no idea who was going to take care of you.

So I became very good at being fine.

Fine at work. Fine in conversations. Fine when asked. Fine even when alone, because admitting otherwise felt like a kind of failure.

But there is a cost to that kind of fine.

It is not dramatic. It does not announce itself. It simply accumulates — quietly, steadily — until one day something very small happens and the whole structure of fine collapses.

For me, it was a Tuesday.

Nothing significant happened. No crisis, no confrontation, no particular loss. Just a Tuesday. And I sat down and could not get back up.

Not physically. I mean the part of you that keeps performing fine. That part just stopped.

I remember sitting there thinking: I don't actually know how I am. I have been answering that question for so long without checking.

That was the beginning of something.

Not a recovery. Not a turning point in the cinematic sense. Just the beginning of being honest — first with myself, and slowly, carefully, with a few others.

What I found, when I stopped trying to be fine, was not a flood of darkness. It was more like a room I had been avoiding.

Cluttered. A little dusty. But not as terrifying as I had imagined.

There was grief in there. Old grief, mostly — things I had moved past without actually moving through. There was exhaustion that had been waiting patiently for years. There was a version of me that had been asking for attention for a long time and had learned to stop asking.

I spent some time in that room.

I am still spending time in it, honestly.

But here is what I want to say to anyone who is currently very good at being fine:

The fine is not protecting you as much as you think it is.

It is protecting the people around you from having to sit with your reality. Which is generous, in a way. But it is also lonely.

And the loneliness of being fine — of performing okayness while something inside is quietly asking for help — is one of the more exhausting things a person can do.

You do not have to announce it. You do not have to explain it. You do not have to have a reason that sounds serious enough.

You are allowed to simply say: I am not fine today. And leave it there.

That is not weakness.

That is the most honest thing you can offer — to yourself, and to anyone who genuinely wants to know how you are.

The day I stopped trying to be fine was not a good day.

But it was a real one.

And real, I have come to understand, is worth more than fine.

There is something else worth saying here.

When you have been fine for a long time, you start to lose the ability to recognise what not-fine actually feels like.

You normalise the weight. You adjust your baseline. You start to think: this is just how things are. This is just how I am.

And in a way, that is the most insidious part of it — not the hard days, but the slow forgetting of what ease felt like.

I had forgotten.

I had forgotten what it felt like to wake up without the first thought being a task. To sit in a conversation without monitoring how I was coming across. To feel something without immediately assessing whether it was appropriate to feel it.

Stopping the performance of fine did not immediately restore any of that.

But it created space for the question: what would ease actually feel like for me, now, in this life?

That question is still open.

But I am asking it. Which is more than I was doing before.

I also want to say something about the people who asked.

There were a few — not many, but a few — who asked how I was and then waited. Who did not accept fine as a complete answer. Who sat in the silence after the question long enough for something more honest to surface.

Those people changed things for me.

Not because they fixed anything. They didn't. But because they made it possible to be not-fine in their presence, and that possibility — just the possibility — was enough to loosen something.

If you are one of those people for someone in your life: keep doing that. The waiting. The not accepting fine too quickly. It matters more than you know.

And if you are the person who is currently very fine:

I see you.

I know how much effort that takes.

I know it feels like the responsible thing, the kind thing, the manageable thing.

But somewhere, when you are ready, there is a room worth visiting.

It is not as dark as you think.

And you do not have to go in alone.

I used to think mistakes were something you graduated from. Turns out they're more like weather.

More to come.

Keep going.

It sounds simple. It is not.

Keeping going does not always look like momentum. Sometimes it looks like staying in bed until noon and then getting up anyway. Sometimes it looks like doing the smallest possible version of the thing you said you would do.

Sometimes it looks like nothing at all from the outside.

But something inside is still choosing to continue. And that choice — quiet, unglamorous, unrewarded — is the whole thing.

I have been thinking about what it means to keep going when the reasons to stop feel more reasonable than the reasons to continue.

When the effort is not paying off in any visible way. When the people you expected to be there are not. When the version of the future you were working toward keeps shifting.

In those moments, keeping going is not about optimism.

It is not about believing it will get better, or trusting the process, or any of the things people say when they want to be helpful but do not know what else to offer.

It is something quieter than that.

It is the decision — made again and again, sometimes hourly — to remain in the game. Not because you can see the end. Not because you are certain it is worth it. But because the alternative is to stop, and stopping feels like a betrayal of something you cannot quite name.

I think that unnamed thing is yourself.

The version of you that started. The version that believed, at some point, that this was worth beginning.

Keeping going is, in some ways, an act of loyalty to that person.

Even when you are not sure you still agree with them.

There is also something to be said about the texture of keeping going.

It is rarely linear. It does not feel like progress most of the time. It feels like repetition — the same effort, the same uncertainty, the same morning with the same unresolved questions.

And yet something is happening.

Not always in the circumstances. Sometimes only in the person moving through them.

It means believing that the universe is still taking care of us, even when what is happening cannot yet be understood.

Consider a child in the womb.

The child experiences a world it cannot understand. It cannot see what lies beyond. It cannot know why it is there, what is happening around it, or what awaits it.

Yet it remains there for nine months.

There is a time to enter this world.

There is also a time to be released from the womb.

Perhaps some situations in life are like that.

People enter certain circumstances without knowing why. They struggle within them. They feel trapped. They want to get out. They repeatedly ask when it will end.

But perhaps there is a time for everything.

The child does not know when it will be released. It simply continues its journey until the time comes.

Maybe life asks for something similar.

The ultimate purpose of an experience may not always be visible. The reason for going through certain situations may never be immediately clear.

Perhaps everything does not need to be understood.

Sometimes, the only requirement is to keep going.

To experience the moment.

To feel the pain.

To learn from it.

To accept what cannot be changed.

And to allow the experience to become part of life without allowing it to break the person experiencing it.

Because once an experience becomes part of a person's journey, it remains.

The pain may pass.

The humiliation may pass.

The situation may pass.

But the experience remains.

And perhaps that is what is meant to be carried forward.

Looking back, it often becomes clear that even when many outcomes were not what was expected, the person who emerged from those experiences is no longer the same person who entered them.

Stronger.

More balanced.

More aware.

And with a deeper understanding of oneself.

Most importantly, faith can remain — in the caretaker, the Creator, the universe, or whatever name one chooses to give it.

It may not always be possible to know what is best.

But it is possible to believe that what lies beyond human understanding can still be aligned with what is ultimately best.

That is where the journey leads.

Not everything can be controlled.

Another person's choices cannot be controlled. The past cannot be changed. Every outcome cannot be determined.

But one thing can be chosen:

How the experience is received.

It can be received with faith, or lived through with fear.

The situation may remain the same.

The response can be different.

So, for now, the choice is to keep going.

To experience the present moment rather than run away from it.

To trust the timing.

Because just as a child in the womb does not know when it will be released, perhaps people too cannot always know when a difficult chapter is ready to end.

But it will.

The release will come.

Until then, the journey continues.

And perhaps the caretaker who has brought a person this far will continue to guide the rest of the journey toward what is best.

All that is required is to keep going.

This too shall pass.

Contentment is not easy, nor is it common in today's world.

It is easy to feel content when everything is going the way it is expected to. But when life repeatedly refuses to go that way, year after year, contentment begins to mean something different.

It becomes a quiet kind of strength.

Perhaps even a quiet pride.

Not the pride of having received everything one wished for, but the quiet peace of knowing that what was not received did not take away who one is.

There is a wish.

Then comes the will behind it — the effort, the hope, the belief that once that wish is fulfilled, perhaps the next part of life will finally fall into place.

And then come the expectations.

One unfulfilled expectation.

Then another.

And another.

Sometimes, this continues for years.

Perhaps the simplest lesson in life is also one of the hardest to accept: not every expectation becomes reality. Not every wish comes true. Not everything wanted becomes ours.

Accepting that does not mean giving up on wishes or becoming indifferent to life.

It simply means learning to hold a wish without allowing its absence to disturb one's entire sense of peace.

Perhaps that is what contentment really is.

Not having everything.

Not pretending that disappointment does not hurt.

But being able to want something, work for it, hope for it — and still remain at peace if it does not happen.

And perhaps faith has something to do with it too.

The belief that there is a Supreme Power, even when life does not unfold according to our wishes. The belief that every change of direction, every disappointment, and every unfulfilled expectation may carry a meaning that is not immediately visible.

Sometimes, perhaps, life is not only asking what we want.

Perhaps it is also quietly shaping who we become.

To remain human.

To remain kind.

To remain grounded.

And, above all, to remain true to the person one chooses to be.

Life may not always give us what we wish for.

But what we become from what life gives us — and what it withholds from us — is still, in many ways, our choice.