rain softens the glass
footsteps fade along the pier
silence waits for me
I ask myself sometimes: What could I do more of? The question comes quietly, usually when I’m waiting for something—waiting for water to boil, waiting for a train to arrive, waiting for the sun to tip behind the rooftops. It’s not the loud kind of question that demands an answer right away. It lingers, like the smell of rain on stone.
I could do more listening.
Not just to people, but to everything else that tries to speak when we’re not paying attention. The sea has a voice when it pulls back against the rocks. Old buildings creak differently in the morning than they do at night. Even silence has accents, depending on whether you hear it in a library, in a forest, or in the pause before someone confesses something they weren’t sure they could say.
Most of us carry the volume too high on our own thoughts, drowning out the world. I think of an evening in Palermo when a group of men sat at a corner table, drinking in near silence. Every so often one would tap a finger against the glass, and the others would nod. I couldn’t understand the code, but I knew it mattered. Listening isn’t passive—it’s a kind of respect. It’s how you let the world teach you without insisting it speak your language first.
I could do more slowing down.
Not the kind of slowing that means laziness or idleness, but the slowing that changes how things appear. Once in Bern, I missed a tram and decided not to hurry for the next one. I walked instead. The ten minutes stretched into nearly an hour because I noticed details I’d never seen before—the cracks in the pavement forming patterns like maps, the way ivy had wrapped itself around a bench, the sound of a bicycle bell carrying longer than it should have through the cool air.
When you move too fast, life blurs like a photograph taken with the wrong setting. You can survive that way, even thrive by certain standards, but you risk missing the small sunrise in your rearview mirror. And sometimes, that’s the only part worth remembering.
I could do more making.
Not in the sense of production, not the digital churn of output, but the kind of making where your hands come away stained or tired. In Ljubljana, I stayed in a guesthouse where the owner carved spoons out of fallen wood. Each one was slightly crooked. He gave me one when I left. “It will outlast me,” he said. I still have it. It reminds me that the scale of what you make doesn’t matter. One handmade thing, even a spoon, carries more of you than a thousand things pressed by machines.
Making anchors you in a way scrolling never can. A garden, a paragraph, a loaf of bread—they resist the slipstream of distraction.
I could do more teaching by example.
The best lessons I’ve learned weren’t explained. They were lived. A friend in Tokyo once walked me through the city without checking his phone once. Not even for directions. “If you’re lost,” he said, “look at the people, not the map.” He never framed it as teaching, but I still carry it.
Words persuade for a moment, but actions endure. If I could do more of anything, it would be living so that others—not just friends or family, but strangers—catch a glimpse of something worth keeping.
I could do more wondering.
Wonder isn’t childish. It’s oxygen. Without it, the world gets stale. I remember standing in Helsinki, watching snow fall into the sea. The flakes didn’t melt right away; they floated first, resting a moment before dissolving. I stood there too long, probably looking strange, but it struck me: even snow hesitates before becoming something else.
That hesitation was wonder, and it made the cold bearable.
Wonder keeps you alive to mystery. And mystery is the only soil where meaning grows.
I could do more gratitude.
In Slovenia, my grandmother once placed a single apple in my hand, one she’d grown in her small orchard. She said nothing. I ate it standing there, and for some reason it felt like the most generous gift I’d ever received. Gratitude is like that—it multiplies quietly. You don’t need more things. You just need more thanks for the things already in your hand.
When you name what you’re grateful for, life reveals its surplus. It’s like pouring water from a jug and realizing the more you pour, the more it refills.
I could do more time with family.
Adventures have their place, but the people around your table become the real map. In Basel, I once cooked a meal for my sister when she visited. Nothing fancy—bread, soup, cheese. We ate slowly, talking about nothing in particular. Later, when she left, I realized the evening had marked me more than any distant horizon ever could.
Stories aren’t real until they’re shared. Victories aren’t sweet until someone else laughs with you. A life is built from rituals so small they barely seem worth noting—yet when stacked together, they become the architecture of memory.
I could do more forgiving.
Not just others. Myself. We live in a culture that worships optimization, as though a human can be debugged like faulty code. But perfection is a trap. Forgiveness is the release valve.
On a train from Berlin, I once overheard two strangers arguing softly. One of them finally said, “Let’s not carry this into tomorrow.” They both fell silent. It struck me as the simplest definition of forgiveness: the refusal to drag old weight into a new day.
Without forgiveness, you become a porter carrying bags that aren’t even yours anymore. With it, you move lighter, freer, ready to begin again.
I could do more being.
Not doing, not striving, not performing. Just being. Sitting on a porch while evening folds over the land. Watching shadows lengthen until they disappear. Breathing in time with the world.
This isn’t wasted time. It’s the time that makes all the rest possible. To be is to remember that you are not a résumé, not a machine, not a list of metrics. You are a body, a soul, present in one moment that will never repeat.
If you put it all together, the answer isn’t about piling more onto the plate. It’s not about busyness. It’s about depth.
More listening.
More slowing.
More making.
More gratitude.
More wonder.
More family.
More forgiving.
More being.
The measure of life isn’t how much you’ve done. It’s how much you’ve noticed while doing it.
And maybe, if I listen hard enough, the world itself will whisper the next thing I should do more of.
life 