When I was eight, I learned what it meant to be seen. Not the kind of seeing where someone waves at you in the hallway or calls your name for attendance. But the raw, irreversible seeing that happens when you step out from behind whatever has been keeping you safe and place something delicate in the open.
It was a Wednesday. I remember this because my shirt still smelled like Tuesday’s rain, and my socks had that damp stiffness they get when they’re not quite dry from the night before. I stood in front of the class gripping a sheet of paper that had grown soft in my palm—thinner by the second, like rice paper left too long in the rain.
I’d practiced the poem for days. Out by the stone wall behind our house, where the ants moved like they had somewhere quiet and important to be, and the trees listened without judgment. Out there, the words came easily. They poured. I whispered them like secrets to the wind. I believed them.
But in the classroom, everything changed.
Halfway through, I lost the line. Just—gone. Like it had never belonged to me at all. A pause opened up in the middle of the sentence. It didn’t feel like forgetting. It felt like falling through glass.
Nobody laughed.
Nobody saved me.
Time just… hovered.
And then I kept going.
Softer.
Careful.
As if I was afraid the silence might crack if I pushed too hard against it.
When it was over, no one clapped. There wasn’t applause. There wasn’t ridicule. There was just life, moving on. Except for one boy—one I never really spoke to—who walked past my desk and gently slid my pencil back beside me.
“Cool poem,” he said.
Just like that.
Like it was normal.
Like he hadn’t just witnessed me unravel and reassemble in front of twenty-four blinking faces.
—
What Makes Me Nervous
Still, to this day, it’s that moment. The stepping out. The exposure. The chance that the words won’t come, or worse, that they will—and no one will care. That I’ll say something true and be met with silence.
But nervousness, I’ve learned, isn’t weakness. It’s not failure waiting to happen.
It’s presence.
It’s proof that something inside you is real enough to risk.
We get nervous when we approach the edge of something important.
When the stakes, however small, feel connected to who we are.
And that’s not a flaw.
That’s a signal.
—
Wabi-Sabi and the Voice That Quivers
Wabi-sabi reminds us to find beauty in what is not polished.
In the unedited draft.
In the trembling voice.
In the pauses we didn’t plan, but still survived.
It teaches us:
- Nervousness is a form of aliveness. A sign you’re paying attention.
- A poem remembered imperfectly can still be unforgettable.
- Cracks let the light in—but also let it out.
- What you risk sharing imperfectly might become someone else’s quiet bravery.
—
So now, when I feel that same flutter,
when the paper softens in my grip again,
when my voice shakes before it finds its footing,
I think back to that moment.
The falling.
The line forgotten.
The boy with the pencil.
And I remember:
Even the nervous stand tall for a while.
Even silence carries recognition.
And even the most imperfect offerings
can echo in someone else’s chest
long after they’re spoken.
life 
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