It happened last Thursday, sometime between the second and third cup of coffee, the kind of overcast day where the light never fully commits, where the sky feels like it’s thinking about something heavy but doesn’t want to talk about it. I had promised myself I would stay offline, but promises made to ourselves are often the first ones we learn how to bend.
I ended up sitting in a tram that moved too slowly, surrounded by people who weren’t really there—heads down, headphones in, everyone scrolling through different versions of somewhere else. I was holding a book I wasn’t reading, watching a woman in the corner eat a sandwich like she was trying not to disturb it.
And then I saw him.
Across from me. Probably fifty-something. Wearing a dark coat that had seen better seasons and hands like he worked with things heavier than screens. He was staring straight ahead. Not at me. Not through me. But into something. Focused in a way that felt strangely old-fashioned, like a photograph from the 1940s had stepped into the carriage and decided to sit a while.
We made eye contact. Not for long. Just long enough.
And for a brief, barely noticeable moment, I looked away first.
—
That’s it. That’s what this is about.
That small, ridiculous, quiet moment of looking away.
It bothered me more than it should have. I got off two stops early and walked the rest of the way, my hands buried in the pockets of a jacket that doesn’t keep out the wind anymore.
And the entire walk, I kept thinking—Why did I look away?
He didn’t scare me. He didn’t challenge me.
But something in his stillness—
his total lack of flinch—
unsettled something I didn’t know was unsettled in me.
—
We live in a time of hyper-movement.
Swipe, tap, click, post.
Reaction before reflection.
And somewhere in all of it, we’ve become uncomfortable with stillness.
With unwavering focus.
With someone simply being there, not asking for attention, not performing their identity, just… watching.
That man didn’t look away.
Not because he was trying to assert anything,
but because he didn’t need to retreat.
He wasn’t threatened by presence—his or mine.
And I, apparently, still was.
—
On Not Flinching When It’s Easier To
There’s a certain kind of strength that has nothing to do with force.
It’s not loud.
It doesn’t raise its voice or prove its position.
It doesn’t scramble when silence stretches too long.
It’s the strength of being able to hold stillness like a sword.
Of watching without trembling.
Of not needing to look away just because the moment becomes uncomfortable.
There are lessons we cannot learn through thinking.
Only through tension.
Only through the practice of staying exactly where we are when everything in us wants to shift, fidget, escape.
I used to believe action was everything.
That movement was progress.
That stepping forward—even blindly—was better than pausing.
But now I wonder if the real difficulty is not in striking,
but in waiting.
Waiting without apology.
Without collapse.
Without hiding behind false humility or reaction.
—
Wabi-Sabi in the Gaze That Holds
Wabi-sabi teaches us to honor the flawed, the quiet, the enduring.
But I think it also teaches us something else—
to hold our gaze.
Not with aggression,
but with presence.
To say, without saying,
“I am here. I see you. I see myself.”
It reminds us:
– You don’t have to react to everything. Some things are asking to be witnessed, not answered.
– Holding your ground is not about dominance. It’s about integrity.
– There is nothing shameful in silence. There is power in staying still.
– The person who flinches first often regrets it longer. Not because they lost—but because they blinked at their own truth.
—
I got home that day and poured a cup of tea, the kind that takes its time to cool and doesn’t ask for sweetening. I didn’t open my laptop. I didn’t check the news. I sat there, letting the steam rise toward a ceiling that never answered my questions.
I thought about that man.
I thought about how I flinched.
I thought about how, next time, I want to hold the stare.
Not as a test.
Not as defiance.
But as a practice.
Of presence.
Of steadiness.
Of letting discomfort pass through me without collapsing under it.
Because maybe real strength
has less to do with what you fight
and more to do with what you don’t run from.
And maybe, just maybe,
everything we’re trying to become
starts there—
in that one small, almost invisible moment
where we decide
not to look away.
life 
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