Fragments of the Quiet Mind

Last night i was scrolling through my feed, watching friends share grief after grief—losses, heartbreaks, moments that should have made us gather, cry together, hold each other close. Instead, all I did was tap a heart emoji under each post, one after another, like I was ticking off some empathy checklist. I felt this strange disconnect. Was that really me caring? Or just a shadow of it? It hit me then—this paradox we live with every day. We’re more connected than ever, but somehow the caring feels hollow. The digital world teaches us to perform empathy in tiny clicks and quick comments, but it rarely lets us be there. The silence, the awkwardness, the weight of someone else’s pain—those don’t translate well through a screen. I keep asking myself: When did empathy become a set of symbols? When did “I’m here for you” turn into an emoji? There’s something unsettling about caring that feels rehearsed, like a script we all read but don’t fully understand. It’s empathy reduced to conven...

I was fourth in line, staring at the back of a denim jacket and pretending not to read the pastries twice. The man ahead of me kept adjusting his AirPods. I kept adjusting my thoughts. The café was full of the usual late afternoon static—laptop clatter, jazz no one listens to, baristas calling names like incantations. I ordered my coffee—black, no room—and moved to the pick-up area like someone playing a role they knew too well. That’s when I noticed the girl by the window. Not looking outside, not reading, not even pretending to. Just holding her phone up to her face—slow, deliberate, as if asking permission from her own image. A few filters later, her features glowed. Skin blurred to impossibility. Eyes enlarged just enough to seem slightly haunted. The picture looked nothing like the girl I was watching. But she smiled at it. Not vainly. Almost gratefully. I don’t use filters—not out of principle, just confusion. I can never find the right one. Nothing ever feels like me. Or ma...