Fragments of the Quiet Mind

I once felt proud for skipping sleep to finish a report. Thought it meant I was dedicated. Thought the bags under my eyes were merit badges, that my value could be measured in unread emails and caffeinated resolve. Someone even called me “inspiring” for it. It felt good. Until it didn’t. No one ever warns you that burnout doesn’t arrive like a storm—it creeps in like a whisper. You start forgetting birthdays. You eat meals with one hand, scrolling with the other. You hear a laugh and don’t remember the last time you made that sound. You mistake productivity for meaning. You mistake being needed for being loved. I used to think the grind was noble. Now I think it’s just well-marketed self-neglect. There's a quiet violence in how we've romanticized exhaustion. We give standing ovations to people who sacrifice everything except their deadlines. We confuse busyness with importance, and rest with weakness. We admire the person who never stops—but we never ask what they’re runnin...

I need to be careful. It’s strange how easily someone else's confusion can start to feel like my own, how their uncertainty can seep into my thoughts and make me question things that were once so clear. When they waver, I find myself slipping too, teetering on the edge of their indecision, wondering if maybe I’m the one who’s lost. Am I too much? Not enough? I keep asking myself these questions, knowing deep down that they weren’t mine to begin with. But here I am, letting their doubts crawl into my mind, letting their hesitation make me wonder if my worth is as fragile as their ability to see it. It’s like I’m standing in a fog that isn’t even mine, trying to find my footing on ground that’s been shaken by someone else’s storms.  There’s something deeply human in this tendency, isn’t there? This strange, almost instinctive drive to define ourselves through the eyes of others, to measure our worth by the scales of their perception. Maybe it’s rooted in our nature, this yearning for...