Fragments of the Quiet Mind

What happens when purpose is too small—and still too heavy? There’s a paperclip on my desk that hasn’t held anything together in weeks. It just lies there—twisted slightly, one end stretched from some past insistence. It used to bind pages, serve a purpose. Now it just listens. I wonder if it remembers. How strange that something designed to be useful becomes unsettling when it’s still. That its inaction feels like failure, even though it hasn't broken, hasn't rusted. It's just... unneeded. We call objects "idle" when they are not in use, as if their worth depends on being occupied. As if stillness is only ever temporary, and silence is a flaw to be fixed. The paperclip hasn’t moved in days, but neither have I. I sit here most mornings, staring at a blank document, wondering if I’ve bent myself out of shape trying to hold things that were never mine to keep. Expectations. Deadlines. People. Ideas. I used to think I was built for connection. But maybe I was j...

  Silence is not empty—it is a room where the walls are made of mirrors, and every reflection is a question you’ve been too busy to answer. I sit with it often, this absence of sound, this weight of nothing pressing against my ribs. At first, it feels like drowning. Then, like floating. Then, like neither—just a suspended moment where the mind, starved of distraction, begins to feed on itself.   What are you afraid of?   the quiet asks.   Everything,   I think.   Name one,   it insists. And so I do. Solitude peels back the layers we wear for others until only the raw, unedited self remains. There is no audience here, no performance to sustain—just the slow, uncomfortable intimacy of your own company. You realize, with a dull ache, how much of your life is built on avoiding this exact confrontation. The things we call "loneliness" are often just truths we’ve been running from. I used to think silence was passive. Now I know it’s the most aggressive trut...