Tag: dailyprompt-1916

I was thirty, and tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
Not exhausted. Not burnt out.
Just quietly worn from too many years of trying to be legible.

I lived alone then, in a top-floor apartment with slanted ceilings and a window that caught exactly one hour of afternoon sun. If I placed the chair just right, I could sit in that warm square of light like a plant, not thinking, not speaking—just existing, gently.

Most evenings I’d make dinner without ceremony. Miso soup. Cold rice. Maybe an egg. I’d eat slowly, not because I had the time, but because I no longer felt the need to rush through the parts of life that didn’t need to impress anyone.

That year, I stopped giving long answers.
When people asked how I was, I said, “I’m okay.”
And let it be true without needing to prove or explain it.
I stopped trying to be profound in conversations.
I said “I don’t know” when I didn’t.
I let pauses stretch a little longer than comfortable,
and found that they held more honesty than words ever did.

—

The Quiet Power of Not Performing

At thirty, I realized how much of my twenties were spent performing clarity.
Sounding certain when I was unsure.
Sounding fine when I was fractured.
Sounding busy, because being still made me feel disposable.

But turning thirty felt like a soft undoing.
Like gently unraveling a knot I didn’t know I was tied into.

It wasn’t a revelation.
It was a slow exhale.
A quiet return to the parts of myself I’d set aside to seem more useful, more likable, more productive.

And I understood—
you don’t need to prove your softness is sharp.
You don’t need to defend your peace.
You don’t need to be understood by everyone to feel whole.

—

Wabi-Sabi in the Letting Go

Wabi-sabi teaches us that beauty isn’t in perfection.
It’s in what survives without shouting.
It’s in what lingers after you’ve stopped trying to make it stay.

It reminds us:

• Clarity doesn’t always come with answers. Sometimes it’s just the noise falling away.
• Not all growth is visible. Some happens in the way you no longer chase what used to hurt.
• Letting go of needing to be impressive is one of the most impressive things you can do.
• There’s strength in saying less—and meaning more.

—

Now, when I sit in that same chair, in that square of afternoon sun,
I don’t think about who I used to be.
I don’t try to write the perfect sentence.
I don’t check if the world is still paying attention.

I just sit.
Quietly.
Fully.
Here.

And in that moment—
I am not unfinished.
I am not behind.
I am not too late or too much or too uncertain.

I am simply thirty.
And finally,
I do not need to explain myself to feel real.

When I was twenty, I spoke too carefully. I shaped my words like furniture in someone else’s house—useful, polite, easy to move if needed. I was living in a shared flat near the train station in Bern, where the walls were thin enough to hear someone brush their teeth but thick enough to keep their loneliness in.

I had just started university, and everything felt like a test I hadn’t studied for. Every conversation, every glance across a seminar room, every pause after saying something that maybe didn’t land quite right. I read too much philosophy back then, underlined too many things, tried too hard to sound like I knew what I was doing. But I didn’t.

One night, during a literature class, the professor asked us to speak about a passage—something about silence in a story by Dazai. I raised my hand, not because I had something meaningful to say, but because I was tired of listening to myself stay quiet.

When I spoke, my voice caught. Just a little. Like it had tripped on its own shoelace. The sentence didn’t flow. It felt jagged, too soft at the end.

No one said anything.
The room stayed still.
And I thought I’d failed.

But then the professor—he was older, calm in a way you can’t fake—nodded slowly and said,
“Yes. That’s it exactly.”

That was all. No praise. No spotlight.
Just a soft affirmation that I hadn’t ruined everything by speaking.
That maybe, even the words that come out uneven
still land where they’re meant to.

—

The Quiet Terror of Being Heard

At twenty, what made me nervous wasn’t rejection.
It was the possibility of being understood.
Of saying something so close to the truth that someone else would recognize it.
And what then?
What if they saw me?
What if I could never hide again?

But nervousness, I’ve learned, is not something to outgrow.
It’s something to walk beside.
A reminder that something inside you matters enough to risk.

It doesn’t mean you’re unready.
It means you’re awake.

—

Wabi-Sabi in the Half-Spoken Thought

Wabi-sabi is not just about the cracked bowl or the faded fabric.
It’s about the moment your voice falters but doesn’t fall.
It’s about the sentence that ends strangely
but still means something to someone.

It reminds us:

• You don’t need to speak perfectly to be understood.
• A trembling truth still holds weight.
• Even soft words can leave deep impressions.
• Sometimes silence is the second half of a sentence.

—

Now, when I speak—when I write—there’s still that hesitation.
That small echo of twenty-year-old me,
sitting in a too-bright classroom,
wondering if the room would forgive me for being real.

But I’ve learned to love the pause.
The unevenness.
The way some thoughts only find their shape after they’ve been spoken aloud.

Because maybe it’s not about saying it right.
Maybe it’s about saying it anyway.
And trusting that someone, somewhere,
is waiting to nod slowly and say,
“Yes. That’s it exactly.”

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.