Tag: dailyprompt-1911

cloudless morning sky—
still, the shutters creak closed,
someone knows what’s coming

—

In the spring of 2018, I spent a few weeks living just outside Beppu, in a borrowed room above a bakery where the walls smelled faintly of yeast and rain.
It was a quiet time, uneventful in the way that’s easy to forget but hard to recreate.
Each day followed the same rhythm:
wake, walk, write, eat, repeat.

The man who owned the bakery was in his sixties and moved with the kind of calm that made you feel like nothing urgent could ever happen in his presence.
One morning, I asked why he always closed the storm shutters on the west-facing windows even when the sky was clear.
He shrugged and said,
“Because when it rains here, it doesn’t warn you.”

That sentence stayed with me.
It felt like it wasn’t about weather at all.

—

Most Problems Don’t Arrive Loud

The truth is, most of the things that unravel us don’t come crashing through the door.
They arrive slowly, in whispers.
In small compromises.
In the email we don’t reply to.
In the conversation we avoid because “it’s not the right time.”
In the gut feeling we silence with distraction.

By the time the problem is undeniable,
it’s already grown roots.

We act surprised,
but somewhere deep down,
we saw it forming.

We just didn’t deal with it—
because we thought we had time.

—

The Wisdom of Early Attention

There is a quiet kind of strength in tending to something before it becomes a fire.
It doesn’t look heroic.
No one claps.
No one sees you close the shutter while the sky is still blue.

But that’s the point.
Real care happens before it’s convenient to call it care.

It looks like:

• Clarifying feelings before they become resentments.
• Adjusting the routine before burnout sets in.
• Reaching out to someone before the distance hardens into disconnection.
• Resting before you’re forced to.
• Listening to the small discomfort before it becomes a deep ache.

Prevention isn’t dramatic.
It’s subtle.
And that’s why it’s so easy to skip.

—

What Living Proactively Actually Means

Dealing with things before they arise doesn’t mean becoming paranoid,
or controlling every outcome,
or trying to predict every twist of the road.

It means learning to notice.
To stay present enough to sense the shift in air pressure before the storm.
To trust that small discomfort is a signal, not a nuisance.
To believe that something handled gently now won’t need to be torn out later.

Proactivity is care.
It’s presence.
It’s self-respect disguised as preparedness.

—

Wabi-Sabi and the Unseen Crack

Wabi-sabi reminds us that beauty lives in the incomplete,
in the nearly broken,
in the places where decay has quietly begun.

To honor those imperfections is not weakness.
It’s wisdom.

• A crack, acknowledged early, can be mended with gold.
• A strain in the thread can be rewoven before it snaps.
• A room, aired out before mold appears, stays alive.
• What we attend to early, we rarely lose.

—

Now, when the sky is clear and everything feels still,
I ask myself—what am I pretending not to see?
What needs attention while it’s still small enough to hold in one hand?

Because when the rain comes,
it doesn’t ask if you’re ready.
And the shutters don’t close on their own.

So I close them now.
Not because I’m afraid.
But because I’ve learned
that peace is something you tend to
before the storm arrives.

old shoes by the door—
no one told them where to go,
still, they wore the road

—

In late autumn, I found myself standing in my kitchen in Bern long after midnight, surrounded by the hum of a refrigerator that had seen better years and the faint echo of rain tapping gently on the windowpane like an old friend too polite to knock. I had boiled water for tea I wasn’t going to drink and stared at the same chipped mug I’d used for years, its handle barely holding on—like me, I suppose.

It wasn’t a crisis.
It wasn’t dramatic.
There was no grand falling out, no tragic catalyst, no external force pushing me out the door.

It was something quieter, deeper, and more personal.

It was the slow realization that the life I had built—though safe, though structured, though passable in the eyes of others—no longer fit the shape of who I was becoming.
And when that truth finally landed, not like a crash but like a feather falling steadily to the floor, I knew:
I had to leave.

—

Why the First Step Is the Hardest—But the Most Transformative

We like to believe that big change begins with fireworks.
With packed bags and goodbye letters and Instagram captions that say “onto new beginnings.”
But more often, growth begins with discomfort you can no longer explain away.

It begins with a sentence you whisper to yourself in the dark:
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Not with resentment, not with anger—
just with a quiet kind of honesty that no longer asks permission.

For me, that moment of clarity didn’t arrive on a mountaintop or during a life-coaching retreat.
It arrived in the pause between boiling water and pouring it.
In that stillness, I heard my truth.

That was my first step.
The one no one saw.
The one that changed everything.

—

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with One Honest Moment

There’s a famous saying: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
But what it doesn’t say—what it never says—is that the step doesn’t have to be physical.
It can be internal.
Invisible.
Unremarkable to anyone but you.

The journey I started wasn’t toward a specific destination.
It was toward alignment.
Toward living a life that didn’t require me to explain or defend my softness.
Toward choosing a rhythm that suited my breath, not someone else’s expectations.

And that first step—small as it was, silent as it felt—was the moment I chose not to abandon myself anymore.
And I believe that’s where all meaningful transformation begins.

—

What I’ve Learned Since Taking That Step

What followed wasn’t glamorous.
It was messy.
It was lonely, beautiful, uncertain, filled with long walks in unfamiliar cities and conversations that changed shape as I grew.
But it was mine.

And along the way, I learned a few things I return to often—especially when doubt tries to sneak back in:

• You don’t need a full map to move forward. The next right step is enough.
• Growth feels, at first, like loss. But it’s really just space being made for something more honest.
• Clarity is often the result of movement, not a prerequisite for it.
• You are allowed to outgrow a life that once fit. That’s not betrayal—it’s becoming.

—

Wabi-Sabi in the Decision to Begin

There is something deeply wabi-sabi in choosing to begin again—especially when nothing is forcing you to.
In seeing the cracks in your routine not as failures, but as invitations.
In recognizing the beauty of an imperfect life trying, still, to unfold into something real.

This quiet philosophy teaches us:

• The first step doesn’t have to be confident. It just has to be real.
• There is elegance in the incomplete, the uncertain, the becoming.
• You don’t need to fix yourself to start. You need to listen. Then move.
• Peace is not in staying where you are. It’s in honoring where you’re being pulled.

—

I never finished that tea.
But I did start something else—
something that felt like coming home to a version of myself I hadn’t met yet.

Now, when someone asks me what decision changed everything,
I don’t say “quitting my job” or “moving cities” or “starting over.”
I say: The night I stood in the kitchen and told myself the truth.
The night I left a life that no longer held me with care.
The night I took the first step—quiet, honest, mine.

And if you’re standing on that edge,
wondering whether it counts if no one sees it,
let me tell you:

It counts.
It always counts.

Because the journey begins there—
not when you arrive,
but when you decide
you’re no longer willing to stay behind.