pockets feel lighter
when the weight is in the mind—
stone worn smooth by years
It’s the kind of question that invites quick answers.
What’s the most important thing to carry with you all the time?
You could say your phone, your keys, your wallet. Maybe hope, courage, or some equally polished word that sits well on a coffee mug. But I’ve learned that for me, the answer isn’t an object or even a feeling. It’s something quieter, less visible, but far heavier when you don’t have it.
It’s the pause.
I didn’t always carry it.
In my twenties, I moved too quickly through conversations, decisions, nights out. I said things without thinking. I agreed to things without knowing why. There was no gap between impulse and action—no space for reflection. And inevitably, the regret came trailing after, like a stray dog that always knew where to find me.
The first time I noticed the pause was in Basel, on a day so ordinary it should have disappeared into the cracks of memory. Rain fell steady, turning the cobblestones slick and dark. I was walking back from Marktplatz with a bag of vegetables from the Saturday market. My hands were cold. I was tired. And there it was—this urge to say something sharp to someone who didn’t deserve it.
In the space of a heartbeat, I stopped. I didn’t say it. The thought dissolved like a sugar cube in coffee, disappearing without leaving a trace. The air felt lighter. My chest felt lighter. And I realized: this wasn’t just self-control. This was a compass pointing away from the territory where regret grows.
I carried that compass into other places—into other versions of myself.
Years later, I found myself in Shinjuku, walking under the glowing kanji signs that blinked in the humid summer night. The air smelled like rain on asphalt, soy sauce, and cigarette smoke. I’d been in Tokyo for a week, drifting between late-night ramen counters and bars small enough that you had to duck to enter.
One night, outside a place tucked under the railway tracks, a stranger invited me in. The beer was cold, the light golden, the kind of night where temptation walks easily through the door. A younger version of me would have gone without thinking. But somewhere in the folds of memory, I reached for that same pause I’d picked up in Basel. I let it sit in my palm, heavy and familiar. And I walked away.
It didn’t feel like missing out. It felt like keeping something.
The pause became a habit the way a river becomes a canyon—slowly, by wearing down the rough edges. And like any good habit, it’s not about perfection. I still fail. I still say things I wish I hadn’t. But the number of times I fail is less, and that’s enough.
I’ve learned that flaws aren’t always meant to be fixed. Some are temporary—born from fatigue, hunger, or mood. Others are permanent, carved deep by years of habit or by forces we never controlled: genetics, accidents, sheer chance. You can’t sand away every imperfection any more than you can glue a cracked teacup into something flawless. But you can choose not to pour boiling water into it.
That’s the wabi-sabi truth: restraint isn’t denial—it’s care. It’s the quiet decision to live alongside the crack without making it worse.
I think often about my old mentor from Birmingham.
We met when I was staying at Aston University, in a damp dormitory where moisture gathered at the windows like thoughts you couldn’t shake off. He was a pharmacist by training, but he’d lived many other lives before that. A former cyclist, sun-browned and wiry, the kind of man who seemed tethered to nothing but his own curiosity.
One afternoon, we sat under a tree near the edge of campus, the kind of day when the wind carries both the smell of rain and the warmth of sun. He told me something I didn’t understand until much later: Everyone you’re sitting with right now will stay with you—some as colleagues, some as friends, and some as memories.
I carry him with me still. A couple of years later, he stopped replying to emails. Only later did I learn he’d died of spinal cancer. It struck me that the pause is also a way of carrying people. When you stop before speaking, before acting, you make room for all the voices and lessons you’ve collected over the years to speak up.
Modern life doesn’t make pausing easy. The world is engineered for speed. Instant replies, instant purchases, instant reactions. And yet, the best choices I’ve made have come from resisting that design—creating my own gap between the urge and the act.
The pause has saved me from more than just awkward conversations or impulsive “yeses.” It has kept me from sinking into habits I knew would cost me. Some urges promise pleasure now and regret later. That pause is the one tool that lets you see past the first half of the equation.
It’s not about self-denial. It’s about self-respect. The most important thing you can carry isn’t the thing that helps you move faster—it’s the thing that lets you decide when not to move at all.
In Basel, I sometimes sit by the Mittlere Brücke, watching the river slip past in shades of brown and green. I think of Shinjuku’s neon, of the damp dormitory in Birmingham, of my mentor’s voice under the leaves. I think about how life is less about what we accumulate and more about what we choose to keep—and what we choose to set down.
Keys can be lost. Phones can break. Wallets can be stolen. But the pause, once you learn to carry it, is yours alone. It weighs nothing and yet holds the shape of your entire life.
If you ask me now what the most important thing to carry is, I won’t hand you an object. I’ll hand you a breath between the urge and the act, the stillness that lets you walk away from regret before it takes root.
Keep it with you. Always.
And if you forget it—well—just pause, and pick it up again.
life 
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