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You don’t know the artist’s name, their history, their favourite song, or the shape of their laughter. And yet, something in the work recognizes something in you.

There are a selective few of individuals that enter my life at different points that I admire immensely from afar, and most times they will never be aware of my admiration for them because they are strangers. They know only my name, perhaps know as much as my birthday, but that is all I have given and all I have received of them.

But they aren’t just a stranger – they are a familiar one. They carry a silent strength that not many see, one that they learnt to deal with their emotions alone. You have some people who feel the rain on their skin and some who just get wet – these are the individuals that feel every single drop of rain touch the surface of their skin, every drop that skins into every strand of hair on their heads, they are the ones that absorb the petrichor scent into their lungs – and there is something so incredibly beautiful about that.

Despite only knowing their name, there’s this yearning intimacy I have for them, not in a romantic manner but as if  I’ve known them for a lifetime, even though I haven’t and most cases they probably would view me as an schizophrenic, something within me has this certainty that if I was to spend a night on a bench with them, I would freely be able to vomit out every single thing I carry, and they’d just get it. Because they are someone who has also carried and contained storms within. It is baffling isn’t it, how someone I don’t even know has this kind of effect – every time I come across such an individual it sends my avoidant nature into a spiral.

I’ve always made it known that I see beauty in sadness, that I see beauty in those that have suffered or are suffering – and that is for one sole reason alone, sabr. These individuals that I admire, all carry this strong presence of sabr, even in times where they may not feel it themselves – I do, as someone who knows nothing but your name and the things you choose to share, I see the immense sabr that resides.

People talk about sabr like it’s something soft, peaceful, and spiritually sweet. They quote verses, they say “just have patience,” they speak about the reward, the beauty, the strength. But they rarely talk about the bitterness. The heaviness. The nights where sabr feels like swallowing something sharp. The moments where your heart feels like it’s tearing and you’re expected to “just be patient.”

No one talks about the part of sabr where your chest burns because the thing you want so badly is out of reach. Where your hands are shaking because you’re trying to hold yourself together. Where your tears fall silently because you don’t want anyone to see how much it hurts. Where everything in you wants to scream, “Ya Allah, I can’t take this anymore,” but you stay quiet because you’re trying really hard to trust.

That is the side of sabr no one talks about.

Sabr is not always graceful. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s ugly. Sometimes it feels like standing in the middle of a storm with no umbrella, just praying it doesn’t sweep you away.

No one tells you that sabr can feel like a heartbreak. That patience can feel like a test that pushes you to the edge of yourself. That it’s normal to feel exhausted from waiting. That it’s normal to feel frustrated when you don’t understand why things are happening the way they are. That it’s normal to feel like you’re dragging yourself through the days.

It demands strength you didn’t know you had. It demands silence when your soul wants answers. It demands surrender when everything in you wants control. It demands trust when nothing makes sense. It demands staying soft when life keeps trying to harden you.

Yet these individuals carry patience with them even when they are facing destruction because sabr was never about perfection. It was about trust. About survival. About holding on even when the rope burns your hands.  And that kind of sabr, the raw, trembling kind of sabr, is the sabr that transforms people into the most complex, yet beautiful beings – and it takes one to know one.

I visit art exhibitions every now and then, I like the quiet environment, how there is so many people in one area not connected by conversation but by art. Rarely do I come across a piece that places me in awe, but when I do, I can feel it physically in my heart – you drift past canvases the way you might pass faces at a gathering—appreciating colour here, composition there—until one piece stops you. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t beg. It simply holds you. The brushstrokes feel like breath. The shadows seem to carry unspoken stories. You don’t know the artist’s name, their history, their favourite song, or the shape of their laughter. And yet, something in the work recognizes something in you.

You study the texture like you would the subtle expressions crossing someone’s face. You trace the colours the way your eyes might follow the movement of their hands. There’s an intimacy in the distance. A connection that doesn’t require possession or explanation. You don’t need to know the artist to feel understood by their work—just as you don’t need to know a stranger’s story to feel a pull toward their soul.

In both moments, you’re connecting not to facts, but to essence.

This is the exact same feeling I get when I come across such people. A feeling I wouldn’t be able to describe, but rather something you’d need to experience and understand. To understand what it feels like to be physically stopped in your tracks and hear nothing but the story being told.

We underestimate how much we quietly belong to each other; we may be two completely different people. But in melancholy we become more of one. Maybe it’s because I see myself in them, a direct reflection, or maybe it’s merely the fact I know that they’d understand me the same way id understand them, without the awkward silence and the regret that fills the air afterwards.

Theres a beauty in knowing that these familiar strangers carry pieces of you, of your life, without ever having to fully step into their life. You don’t see each other in person, you don’t text, but your lives brush together enough to make sense of who they are.  

But I do also wonder why God keeps these people afar, why he only limits this to admiration – I’ve had several embarrassing attempts in trying to step closer, but with each step I took the more distance grew. As if there’s this invisible barrier that I cannot cross, that this interaction can merely be admiration from afar. Maybe it is gods’ way of telling me that when someone is drowning, it is not the time to teach them how to swim. Or perhaps we as humans are truly never meant to be fully seen out loud, but only from a far. I am not quite sure what the answer is to this, all I know is that there are souls out there, just like mine, who are merely just trying to survive.

A message to my familiar stranger

Perhaps my dear familiar stranger, you are reading this right now – I will never know and you may forever be oblivious, but in the meantime, you have inspired me to write and this one is for you.

I don’t know what you’re carrying, but I know the posture of someone who is carrying too much. It shows in how you speak, in how you minimize your pain, how you keep going even when stopping would make more sense. It shows in the way you explain things that occurred, and in the moment, you may choose to smile when silence would be more honest.

I am, too, familiar with being strong for so long that people no longer ask if you are tired. They assume endurance is your natural state. They forget that strength is something you do, not something you are and fail to see the quiet calculations you make every day, the emotional weight you manage without witnesses, the nights where your body rests but your mind refuses to follow.

Carrying a burden changes you. it sharpens you, yes, but it also ages you internally. it teaches you discipline, but it also steals softness if you are not careful, perhaps it already has stolen your softness, perhaps it is anger that resides within now. As anger consumes some to the extent, they no longer see themselves as anything than rage embodied. Their vision blurs at the beauty present, the beauty I see within you – and the world is to blame for that. Because I know what it means for all this anger, this anger that was once love. I know that there are limits to what we can endure, and it can reach a point where anger becomes more beneficial, more secure in surviving.

This security can become addictive; I don’t blame you. You grow into refusal to surrender your rage – because doing so means allowing sadness to consume instead. And who would want that right? To have something consume you when you and have control instead – why have tears when you can have a fire rest in your fists, and travel through your veins into your heart – at least then, there’s a warmth within our souls – one that sadness could never provide. But I know this feeling too well, as this anger isn’t just merely anger. It goes by a name called grief.

I want you to know this.

Your exhaustion is not a moral failure. Needing rest does not mean you are weak, feeling overwhelmed does not mean you lack gratitude. Pain can coexist with faith – fatigue can coexist with purpose. You are allowed to be human even if others have benefited from your resilience.

Sometimes the heaviest part of a burden is not the weight itself, but the loneliness of carrying it alone. You learn not to speak because explaining feels harder than enduring, you learn to say “it’s fine” because unravelling the truth would take too long. but silence accumulates. It settles in the body. It shows up as tension, irritability, numbness, or tears that arrive without warning.

You are not required to carry everything forever. Some burdens are meant to be put down. Some were never yours to begin with. Responsibility does not mean martyrdom, love does not require self-erasure, strength does not demand perpetual sacrifice.

If you have been waiting for permission to pause, consider this your permission. If you have been delaying care because others depend on you, please remember that an empty system cannot sustain anything for long, preserving yourself is not abandonment – it is foresight.

And if your burden is something no one else can lift with you, know that even then, you do not carry it unseen. Every quiet tear, every patient step, every moment you kept going when stopping felt easier is known by the One who sees without being told. nothing you endure is wasted. Nothing you survive is invisible. I do not know you, but if you are reading this then I hope you have come to be aware my admiration for you, the I see a certain kind of beauty within your soul that many people do not possess, even if you are blind to what I see, even if you in end call me the blind one, know that I am stubborn in my beliefs, and once I see art that speaks not only to me but to my soul I will forever have it embodied.

I hope you learn to be as gentle with yourself as you have been with everyone else. I hope you find moments of relief that do not require explanation. I hope you remember that your worth is not measured by how much you can carry, but by the fact that you exist at all. Don’t think your patience is failing just because it hurts. Don’t think your sabr is invalid because it feels bitter.

Sometimes the bitterness is the sabr. Sometimes the bitterness is the beauty. Sometimes the bitterness is what pushes you into the right path and makes you whisper du’as you never would have made otherwise.

You are not behind. you are not failing. you are carrying something heavy. And in my eyes, you are one of gods most complex yet beautiful creations.

“I am not frightening because I am cruel,” the bear said quietly. “I am frightening because I am honest.”

At the hour where the day forgot its obligations, I would meet with a bear at the same bench. This bench faced a pond where nothing dramatic ever occurred, the water barely moved. I met the bear without a beginning. There was no moment I could point to and say this is when it started.

One moment the bench existed, the pond stretched out in front of it—flat, obedient, uninterested in spectacle—and the next, the bear was sitting beside me as though it had always kept the space warm. I never asked why the bear was here, and the bear never asked the same of me – we just accepted the arrangement the way tired people accept silence.

All I knew at the time is that it felt important, though I didn’t know why. We sat there, at opposite ends, sometimes facing each other, sometimes watching the motionless pond, as the world continued in its smallest possible way.

We never addressed the strangeness of it all—how a bear could sit calmly on a bench, how I could speak so freely to something that should have terrified me. The absence of explanation felt like a rule. The moment I thought to question it, the thought seemed unnecessary, like asking why water stays level. The pond stayed unchanged. The bench remained sturdy. Nothing arrived to interrupt us. And in that stillness, I realized something quiet and unsettling: I was not performing. I was not defending myself. I was simply present.

At first, our conversations were cautious. I spoke in abstractions—work, time, the dull ache of wanting something unnamed. The bear listened with an attention that felt almost invasive, as if it could hear the thoughts behind the words. When it responded, it did not offer advice. It simply described things as they were: hunger as hunger, fear as fear, rest as something that must be taken, not deserved. I remember thinking how odd it was that the bear sounded less like an animal and more like a part of me I had misplaced.

One day, at the very same hour, where the day once again forgot its obligations, I asked the bear why it goes out of its way to climb trees for bee hives, knowing that it will be swarmed and stung, why it goes through all this hassle for some mere honey when food elsewhere is obtainable.

“I climb the tree knowing I will be hurt,” it said, resting its weight on the bench. “The bark cuts my paws. The bees will come for my eyes. I do not misunderstand this. I calculate it and climb anyway.” The bear lifted its head, not with longing, but with recognition. “You call this desire,” it continued. “You dress it in better words. Purpose. Love. Ambition. Meaning. But it is the same motion of the body toward sweetness – ‘I do not believe the honey will save me,” the bear said. “I believe only that I will taste it. That is enough to move me.”

I was confused, so I asked why for something that is not permanent, why go through this for something short lived.

 “You wonder why you suffer for things that do not last, why you endure the stings of time, rejection, failure. You ask what kind of creature would choose this.” It glared across the pond. “A living one.” The bear closed its eyes, as if it was tasting the honey on its tongue as we spoke. “The sweetness is brief,” it said. “So is the pain. What remains is that I reached.”

“You think I am reckless,” it said gently. “But you are the same. You climb careers, people, dreams. You tell yourself stories about why. I tell myself none. I just climb.”

I understood, finally, that the lesson was not in the honey or the stings, but in the honesty of the motion itself—the courage to want something enough to climb, knowing exactly what it will cost.

Before I could allow the silence to grow too loud, I asked him what if giving too much love is truly a form of hostility against oneself, what if what we think we deserve is the thing we cannot obtain nor handle, what if gods greatest test is giving us what we most desire, what then…

The bear considered this for a long time. It did not answer the way humans answer, by trying to resolve the question. It answered the way weather does—by revealing a pattern.

“You speak as though love is only something poured outward,” the bear said at last, voice low and steady. “As though it does not also leave a hollow behind. When I give too much of myself to the hive, the bees do not thank me. They defend what is theirs. Still, I do not call the climb a mistake. I call it a lesson written in stings.” It shifted its weight, claws pressing into the wood. “Hostility toward oneself is not in the loving,” it continued. “It is in the forgetting of limits. Hunger does not ask what I can handle. Wisdom does.”

The bear lifted its head. “You fear that what you desire will undo you. Sometimes it will. That is not punishment. That is exposure. When you are given what you want, you are shown who you are when there is nothing left to blame.”

It looked at me then, eyes dark, unflinching. “If the gods test you, it is not by cruelty. It is by permission. They let you touch the thing you believe will complete you and watch whether you can hold it without disappearing inside it.”

The bear rose slowly, adjusting its position. “If you cannot,” it said, “you learn restraint. If you can, you learn responsibility. Either way, the gift is not the desire fulfilled, but the knowledge of your own measure.” Then it fell silent again, as bears do—leaving me with the question not answered, but properly weighted.

And with this weight I followed it up with my thought spoken aloud, that sometimes I feel as though my existence is a form of punishment for the sins I have not committed, but rather for the ones my ancestors did. There are rules and boundaries and checklists That I did not write, yet my entire storyline is decided upon how obedient I am when it comes to following.

The bear listened without moving, as if the words had weight and needed somewhere solid to land. When it finally spoke, its voice was not unkind, but it carried the gravity of something that has survived many winters.

“You are born into a forest already marked,” the bear said. “Paths cut by paws long gone. Traps set before you learned the smell of iron. You call this punishment. I call it inheritance.” It turned its head slowly, eyes tracing the distance. “I do not choose the scars on my body. I inherit the memory of fire, of hunters, of hunger passed down in muscle and bone. Still, each day, I decide where to place my feet.”

The bear lowered its gaze to the table between us. “Rules are not written for fairness,” it said. “They are written for order. Survival. Control. Some keep you alive. Some only teach you how to obey. Wisdom is knowing the difference.” Its voice softened. “Your life is not a sentence. It is a negotiation. You are allowed to question the fence, even if you cannot yet climb it. You are allowed to refuse the story that says obedience is the same as worth.”

I too lowered my gaze upon the table between us, allowing myself to sit, to marinate into the words the bear spoke, for that’s all I could do.

The bear noticed my silence, “You are not here to atone for ghosts,” it said. “You are here to decide which lessons you carry forward, and which end with you.”, as if to say: the past may shape the forest—but the next step is still yours. “No matter how fast you run,” the bear added, “no matter how fiercely you hunger for the end, your lungs will shake. Mine do. Yours do. The body always reminds us of the cost.”

It shifted its weight, I came to notice that the bear could never really sit still, it was always shifting or fidgeting in one way or the other when speaking from his thoughts, I saw myself in him in those small moments.  “You think desire carries you forward,” it continued. “It does not. Desire is loud, but it tires quickly. What keeps a creature moving is endurance—the quiet agreement to take one more step while the chest burns.”

The bear looked ahead, not at the finish line, but at the trees just beyond the pond before us. “I do not chase the end,” it said. “I survive the distance.”

And what if the distance is continuous, what if you are heading into nothing, I had asked him.

The bear did not answer right away. It inhaled, slow and deep, as if testing the air for something unseen.

“Then you walk anyway,” the bear said.

It lowered its head, voice steady. “The forest does not promise an edge. Winter does not promise relief. Many paths do not end in triumph, only in continuation. Still, I move.” The bear rubbed its eyes with its large paws. “You are afraid that meaning requires a finish. That endurance must be rewarded with arrival. But distance does not owe you a destination.”

It looked at me then, once again, eyes dark and calm. “If there is nothing ahead, then the act of walking becomes the thing. Breath becomes purpose. Presence becomes proof.” The bear exhaled. “A creature does not live because the path ends. It lives because it is alive while moving.”

I stared back at the bear, processing and putting together his words, and then I turned to look at the pond, as did the bear. What I loved most about our meetings at the bench was the access to the pond, when words spoken aloud and the silences between became too heavy, we retreated back to the pond. Something about it being motionless brought a presence of calmness, a presence of realness. That everything the bear had spoken was truth, whether it was something I wanted to hear or not – he always had an answer to every question mark.

And that made me question why people feared bears, as my eyes retuned back onto the bear, I examined what was sat before me. The bear is not loud in the way fear imagines. It does not announce itself with violence or spectacle. It is a mass of patience—thick fur holding warmth, breath moving slow and deliberate, eyes dark with the kind of awareness that has nothing to prove. When it stands still, the world seems to adjust around it.

People say bears are dangerous, but they never mention how carefully a bear listens. How it knows when to advance and when to sit back. How its strength is not restless, but contained, folded inward like a truth waiting to be asked for. Its claws are honest. Its weight is honest. There is no performance in it.

And then finally, hesitant at first, my tongue lets out the question – why do people fear you?

The bear smiled in the way only bears can—without showing it.

“People fear me,” it said, “because I am honest about my size.”

I frowned, and the bear continued, voice slow, patient. “I do not soften my weight to make others comfortable. I do not hide my hunger, my anger, my tenderness. When I feel, I feel with my whole body. That unsettles those who survive by trimming themselves down.”

It glanced down at its paws—large, scarred, capable. “They see my teeth and imagine violence. They see my strength and assume loss of control. They do not stay long enough to notice restraint, or tenderness, or the way I sit with questions instead of tearing at them.” The bear’s voice softened. “Wisdom is unsettling when it does not ask permission. Emotion is frightening when it is not neat. I carry both openly. Humans prefer these things hidden – people fear what cannot be controlled, and they fear most what reflects them without permission.”

I asked why they run.

“Because I remind them,” the bear answered, “of everything they have learned to cage. Their instincts. Their grief. Their love when it was too much. Their rage when it was justified. I stand where they buried those things and I do not apologize for standing there.” The bear’s gaze lingered on me now, longer than before. “They call me dangerous,” it said softly, “when what they mean is familiar.”

Something in my chest tightened.

“I am feared,” the bear went on, “because I carry truths people spend lifetimes pretending, they have outgrown. And when they see me, they feel the weight of what they abandoned to survive.”

I ask why he doesn’t explain himself before they run away.

“I do not chase, I do not seek harm—but their fear is louder than my reason. you learn to know that kindness can be taken advantage of, that your good intentions and pure heart can be another’s excuse to continue with unfairness. Be kind, but be limited; your kindness should not be a free-for-all, and you should not make it an accessible weapon that others can use against you. My silence is a boundary, a quiet protection, not malice. Sometimes, it is safer to wait and let understanding come in its own time rather than force it in words.”

It leaned close, close enough that I could hear its breath—my breath. “You do not fear me,” it said, almost kindly. “You sit with me. You listen. You ask questions.”

Because I understand your language, I had thought to myself as this creature and I shared the same air.

The bears eyes were steady. “Tell me, “It asked, snapping me out of my thoughts, “how do they react when you feel deeply? When you speak without trimming your truth? When you do not make yourself smaller so others can feel safe?”

The air grew still.

“They fear me for the same reason they fear you,” the bear continued. “Because depth looks like danger to those who live on the surface. Because power that chooses gentleness confuses them. Because a being that knows its own weight cannot be easily controlled.”

The bear leaned closer, close enough that I could feel its breath now—warm, steady, unmistakably alive. Its muzzle filled my vision, scars etched into fur like old stories, eyes dark and calm, not searching for permission. It was the kind of closeness meant to rattle something loose.

Fear hovered, waiting for me to flinch.

But I didn’t.

The bear held there, unhurried, as if daring fear to justify itself. Its presence was overwhelming only in size, not in intent. There was no snarl, no tension in its jaw—just an unblinking honesty, so near it erased the space where panic usually lived.

“I am not frightening because I am cruel,” the bear said quietly. “I am frightening because I am honest.”

Its breath washed over my face again, and I realized how strange it was that nothing in me wanted to run. The closeness did not feel like a threat. It felt like recognition. Like standing before something that refuses to soften its edges for comfort yet has no desire to harm.

The bear did not move away. It didn’t need to. Fear did first.

It paused, then added, almost tenderly, “And so are you.”

And in that moment, as the bear receded and leaned back into its seat, I understood then why the bench felt familiar, why I never questioned the absurdity of meeting a bear on a bench to talk, why when I arrived tired, it was already slouched. When I felt restless, its claws dug into the dirt. I finally understood why the bear spoke with my voice before I recognized it –  I was never sat on bench looking at a beast, I was looking at myself—unshrunk, unmuted, finally allowed to exist.

The realization did not arrive as a shock. It arrived as a simplification. There was no longer a need to imagine the bear’s thoughts, because they followed the same paths mine did. Its patience was my endurance. Its aggression, my anger finally unhidden. It’s quiet was not emptiness but a refusal to waste energy on noise. I understood then that the bear was not accompanying me; it was containing me.

That day was the very last day I ever saw the bear. I sat at the bench, alone. Or perhaps I sat complete. The pond was unchanged. The bench held the same shape. Nothing had been taken away. What had happened instead was that I no longer needed a body outside myself to hold the weight of my questions. I had learned the posture. I had learned how to listen.

If I ever see the bear again, it will not be as something separate. It will be in the way I pause before answering, in the way I allow silence to finish its work. It will be in the knowledge that when I sit with my thoughts now, I do not need a companion. I have already become one.

The bear is you without the performance. Your instincts, your fears, your patience, your hunger for meaning—all compressed into something honest and undeniable. Sitting with it is what happens when you stop arguing with yourself and start keeping yourself company. The bench is the pause you rarely allow. The conversation is existence noticing itself.

And when you finally stand up and walk away, the bear doesn’t follow. It was never meant to. It was only there to remind you that you are already sitting with yourself—whether you choose to listen or not.

“But to peel a pomegranate is to agree to linger, to stain, to choose devotion over convenience. And perhaps that is why so many turn away— not from the fruit, but from what it asks of them.”

The pomegranate grows in regions often silenced. From North Africa to South Asia, and South America to the Middle East, and within the Middle east to the beautiful doorstep of my home – it is native to lands marked by occupation and extraction. As far as memory will allow to carry me into the landscape of childhood, I can remember my nanas garden, besides from her roses that she tended to as if they were her children, I remember the rows upon rows of pomegranate trees, their branches heavy with bruised-red fruit, split open by the sun. I’ve always favoured pomegranates, as they carry a silent whisper of culture, of back home.

Besides from merely being some fruit, I have pondered on the thought of what it means to be pretty like a pomegranate, as they are something that doesn’t try to impress you – it just does. It’s not the kind of fruit you reach for at a party, matter of fact, it’s not the first fruit you reach for straight away when possessing an urging hunger. It doesn’t peel easily like an orange, It’s hard. It’s stubborn. It stains.

It demands your attention, your patience, your hands. You’ll almost always make a mess. Your fingertips turn red, juice will find your sleeve and if not careful, it’ll paint the canvas of your face, and seeds will jump to places you didn’t expect.

And the more thought I put into it, the more I came to the realisation that this mere fruit is awfully a lot like people.

From the outside, pomegranates always look fine, almost if not perfect. Round. Glossy. Put together. You can line up five of them side by side and never guess which one is sweet, which one is bitter, and which one is already quietly rotting inside.

Just like us.

We walk around in skins, we’ve polished clean clothes, practiced words, and half-meant smiles. We keep ourselves “together.” From the outside, we look functional. Stable. Whole. But no one sees what’s really happening beneath the surface.

Some of us are full of joy. Some of us are dry and tired. Some of us are both in the same day. There are people who laugh loudly and go home to silence they don’t know how to sit in. There are people who give generously but feel completely hollow. There are people who don’t know how to say, “I’m not okay,” because they’ve gotten so good at being “fine.” Each crimson seed is a hidden truth, a story held, nestled between tough layers of skin – waiting to be uncovered. Each layer a testament to the commitments and consequences we endure when we dare to lay our hearts and minds bare. And to peel back a layer is to engage in an intimate dance, a tender vulnerability.

But not many see beneath the skin, simply because peeling a pomegranate is a tedious task, as it takes too long, the juice stains the fingers, and the seeds scatter like spilled hours across the table.

But to peel a pomegranate is to agree to linger, to stain, to choose devotion over convenience. And perhaps that is why so many turn away— not from the fruit, but from what it asks of them.

A pomegranate doesn’t offer itself easily. It stays sealed, holding its weight in silence. From the outside, it looks intentional, even restrained, as if nothing inside it is pressing to be felt. That’s the illusion we learned to perfect – appearing whole while carrying an interior that is crowded with history. People often mistake that composure for simplicity. They don’t realize how much force it takes to keep everything contained – how it is a delicate yet chaotic negotiation between the desire to protect ourselves and the yearning desire to be known.

Inside, nothing is singular. There are hundreds of pieces, each one its own small truth. Memories don’t arrive in order; they press against each other, sweet and bitter at the same time. Joy is never untouched by loss. Love is never free of fear. This is what depth looks like when it has nowhere to spill but instead remains contained and sealed.

Opening a pomegranate is an act of rupture. There is no gentle unveiling—only splitting, breaking, exposure. The juice bleeds. The seeds scatter. It leaves marks that don’t wash off easily. That mess has always scared people. We were taught that to be worthy of care, we needed to be tidy, palatable, easy to hold. So, we learned to stay closed, to let people admire the surface rather than risk what would happen if we broke open in their hands.

But there is a quiet grief in being admired without being known. When people only love the shell, they never commit to the weight of what’s inside. They don’t stay long enough to understand that depth is not disorder—it’s accumulation. It’s what happens when you survive, remember, and keep going anyway.

Being pretty like a pomegranate means accepting our own complexity without shame. It means understanding that the mess is not a flaw, but evidence of abundance. That staining someone’s hands doesn’t mean we are harmful—it means we are real. Pomegranate were never meant to be consumed cleanly or quickly. They are meant to be encountered with patience.

If someone wants to know you, they will have to accept the rupture. They will have to sit with the scattered pieces, the contradictions, the sweetness that arrives alongside ache. And if they don’t—if they choose only the surface—then perhaps they were never meant to taste what you carry. Because before one can have taste of a pomegranate, they must first tear open its protective shell, get its sweet blood on their hands. And only then will they truly earn and treasure the taste a pomegranate has to offer.

So, I come to conclude that – if pomegranates are so beautiful and worth the mess, then maybe, I can too, be beautiful and worth the mess.

‘ If god wills it, then I will welcome love with open arms, but until then I leave it in his hands, I will not chase it – as I owe it to myself to be much bigger than this life.’

As a teenager, even as adults – we are infatuated with the concept of soulmates, whether its via our favourite movies, the bestselling novel or when we are casually scrolling through social media. We grow to believe everyone had someone they were romantically destined to be with, that one day you’ll meet someone and everything just fits perfectly. But, as much as this is a possibility and most definitely occurred for most, I’ve also grown to believe that some peoples Naseeb (fate) is to not have a soulmate at all, or even to just spend their lifetime alone.

Now before this is deemed as depressing, the reaction I always get, let me break it down.

The thought of sharing my life in a partnership, sounds exhausting. I don’t want to share my life with anyone because, truthfully, I feel complete on my own. That doesn’t mean I’m closed off to romantic love, but it’s not a priority, and certainly not the most important kind of love in my life.

I came to this realization as I got older and more aware of how the patriarchal systems in place constantly push the idea that women aren’t whole without romantic love, now even more so the idea of love being forced upon men too. The narrative is everywhere, woven into the way we’re raised, the media we consume, and the expectations placed on us.

I’ve witnessed so many people my age already married, whether its mutuals, my friends or even cousins – and every time my heart sinks in disappointment. Now this doesn’t mean I am not happy for them, of course I am, but it’s more so the idea that they could’ve waited – I am not against people falling in love, when it happens and its truly genuine – it’s the most beautiful thing. I say I am disappointed because a part of me grieves the ‘could haves’ and the ‘what ifs’ for them. That they had a whole life ahead of them to explore. Does this go to say that I feel as thought marriage can limit one’s abilities to fulfil their potential, yes. Is this in every case? No. of course not – some people find the one who assists them in reaching their potential, but I believe there are always limitations and most definitely – always sacrifices, that’s the price for love.

Another reason is that most people go into love and marriage thinking it’s something simple and easy – something aesthetic. They don’t truly understand how far from simple it really is. That love isn’t around the clock how it is in our favourite movies and books. Love is messy – loving someone is loving them for their roots, not for the petals they bare – because once the seasons change and those exact petals start to wither, what will you do then?

This is another reason for why I do not view it as a priority in my life – I am not the woman I want to be, nor the woman who is ready to commit themselves fully to a partnership, not in terms of lack of loyalty, but in terms of vulnerability. Love requires you to be vulnerable and raw, to have emotional maturity, to be able to take criticism as advice rather than an attack, to not be distant and non-communitive when something goes wrong and it requires you to sacrifice.

As many attempts and lectures I’ve received from people (my mother being the number 1) trying to convince me that a partnership doesn’t bare sacrifices, I will forever disagree.

‘The right person won’t make you give up so and so’ – they might not, but naturally through time you will give it up yourself. ‘I can still be independent’ – to an extent, you will never experience the same independency you have when you are alone. Love also requires you to set aside your ego, to accept you are wrong in certain moments.

And I am not even speaking in terms of a toxic relationship or a controlling partner; I am also speaking in terms of genuine love. With true love, there will be things you want to fulfil for your partner, time you want to give to them – simply to show your love and commitment to them, and naturally this will almost always lead to you sacrificing something.

And not to mention, no matter how much it’s denied, we live in a generation where we expect men to take the lead, to work and provide. I mention this because although this is the duty of a man, and it is expected (to an extent), many, not all but most, women will sacrifice not only their jobs, but their education – especially when they choose to marry young. And again, this doesn’t go to say its all cases where their partner tells them to make that sacrifice, but in cases where it is WILLINGLY sacrificed, just so they can be at home to give back to their partners – am I against this, no, but I don’t believe these sort of things should be sacrificed so early on in life.

This may paint me as someone who doesn’t believe in love or having a good partner, which is wrong, I believe in both those things – but I do not believe it is a priority, nor do I believe it has to be Naseeb. I’ve also come to the acceptance that in order for me to build and pursue the life I desire for myself, chasing after a soulmate, that may not even exist, becomes an obstacle for my goals. Is it a possibility that all this can be proven wrong, and I will be blessed with an individual who supports me with my goals, of course – everything is in the hands of god – and that’s exactly where I leave love – I don’t chase or scavenge for it, I leave it in the hands of god, and when it is my time, he will bring it forward TO me.

But as of now – I don’t want to share all of my experiences with a spouse; to be blunt, I think they would hold me back. And I don’t mean that in a cruel way, but I truly don’t believe you can experience the full depth of certain moments when they’re filtered through the presence of another person. These moments—these experiences—are what shape your life. And that’s the thing with marrying young; you don’t truly get to experience what it means to be independent, to experience something built solely from your own self.

I want a life that’s mine. A life that doesn’t apologize for being messy, for being too loud, too quiet, too small, too large, too human. I want a life that isn’t borrowed from someone else’s story, isn’t borrowed from their victories, their rules, their timelines. I owe it to myself to exist fully in a world that constantly tells me to shrink – I owe myself noise that is not invasive, that vibrates through my veins and reminds me that I am alive, that my heart is still stubbornly beating, still defying the chaos.

As I move through my life, I don’t crave the presence of a significant other. When I was younger, I did, because at that age, being surrounded by peers at school and absorbing the world’s messaging about relationships, it felt like the most important thing. But now, I cherish slow mornings, when I actually wake up, with my tea and my favourite music. I treasure quality time with my friends more than ever, and the kind of love needed to be given to yourself to truly feel alive, especially after stepping back and reflecting on the kinds of love that truly serve me. I treasure the silence, because I’ve grown to be comfortable with it.

Knowing that my life is mine—and only mine—makes me excited to grow older. I can’t wait to see where my career takes me, where I travel next, what my future apartments will look like, and which passion projects I’ll pour myself into. There’s so much I want to do, and I know I’ll do it—because nothing, and no one, is holding me back – I owe it to myself to be much bigger than this life.

‘If you cup is already full, why not take a minute to drink and enjoy what you already have, before reaching for the jug to fill your cup again. You can always have more, but why not when there’s room to fill your cup again?’

One thought that tends to appear every now and then for me is the subject of happiness, more specifically how happiness does not equal permanence. There have been countless experiences, ones I’ve lived through personally and those that I’ve witnessed others experience – each and every one of them leading to the conclusion and acceptance that happiness does not equal permanence.

I would go as far as to say that this statement has become a belief within my mindset, and I have a singular word explanation for this – greed.

Humans naturally have a want for more, and as long as we embody greed within our souls, happiness will never produce permanence for us. Simply because what comes before permanence of happiness is satisfaction, and due to our greed, and as long as we possess it, satisfaction is something that will never be fulfilled. That cup of satisfaction will either never fill or will eventually overflow and create a mess.

I have witnessed many situations, and have even fallen for this, where we could be so blessed with several different things, whether it’s a partner, a new job or something as small  as the food in front of us ; rather than enjoying whatever that blessing may be in the moment, our minds instantly switch on what more we could have, what could be better – if we have this one good thing, who says we cant have something better. We could have the entire world in our hands and yet still not be satisfied. And of course there is nothing wrong with aiming to have more, or to have better – these are what goals are, these are what give us purpose in life – however, we tend to fall for the idea that once we gain one positive, then that cancels out all the negatives and more positives are now easier to grasp.

Greed becomes the poison to permeance of happiness if an individual lacks humbleness. Are you humble when you receive one good thing, or do you instantly jump for more? Do you appreciate your blessings in the moment for all it is, or do you come to understand their value when that blessing has passed and long gone.

‘Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.’ – Erich Fromm

This is where I came to an understanding – abundance requires control.

Abundance means having plenty or more than enough of something. To have control of abundance means having a lot of something is only beneficial if it is managed properly. Without control, abundance can turn into waste, harm, or chaos. In simpler terms – more is not always better unless guided by discipline, responsibility, or balance, all factors that abandon greed.

A full cup needs a steady hand. You can’t run with a full cup. A full cup demands focus. When you have a full cup, you can’t move like you’re carrying an empty one.

Abundance is almost always seen as a desired state. And one that is quantifiable. But, often, we can’t quantify the thing that would satisfy us. How much money do you need to never desire money again? What kind of relationship would keep you fully satisfied forever? How many friends? Could you quantify your desires?

It’s human nature to never accurately quantify abundance. We think we want more. We need more. When often, a version of us a decade ago would have killed for what we have today. Whether it’s relationships, health, intellectual success, or financial success — there’s something a version of you yearned for, for a long time. And you now take it for granted. Deem it inadequate, even.

Research confirms this. The hedonic treadmill shows us that lottery winners feel euphoric highs for short periods before stabilizing and returning to their baseline state.

We adapt. We recalibrate. We want more. We live life on an ever-shifting baseline, in search of satisfaction.

And it made me realize abundance is a discipline, not a desire. For us to produce a happiness or satisfaction that is permanent, it has to be done through disciple, not through simple desire, because desire is what leads humans to greed – discipline is what keeps us away from it.

Because what happens once you finally get what you want, but can’t handle it? What happens when the things you’ve been constantly demanding more of gets placed into your palms and you no longer know what to do from that point forward? The promotion you finally get, what do you do if that is what breaks you? The perfect relationship you’ve been screaming your lugs out for, what happens if it overwhelms you because you come to realise you haven’t understood your own inner state, let alone even try to understand another person’s?

Abundance without discipline is pure chaos – to want more, you have to be willing to take on more – and to take it on well.

The people I know with the most abundant lives take on the most. And they often share the most, not a spec of greed lives on their soul. Their abundance is a byproduct of surface area and goodwill. They take on more socially, at work, wherever. They develop a reputation for being high capacity. And as a result, the world continues to recognize and give.

And they know that abundance requires saying no. They understand the importance of when knowing something is enough, they are humble with what they have and appreciate it for all its worth in the moment.

Because that full cup can’t take on more liquid. Real abundance means protecting what you have. The discipline of subtraction. Every yes to more requires a no to something else, and most cases that something else is normally the biggest blessing yet, and you won’t be the one saying no – life will be taking that shot for you.

You can’t fill a soul-sized void with achievements. You could spend years getting to the destination and then you find it’s just a place. It’s Tuesday and you still must do laundry. The new car you fantasized about becomes just your car. Or you don’t even feel like it’s yours — you’re anxious you’ll lose what you have. The other shoe is going to drop at any moment, and you need to fight like hell to keep everything you worked for. Psychologists call this the happiness paradox – the people who care most about being happy report lower well-being and more symptoms of depression. Most cruelly, we are hit hardest by disappointment precisely when everything is going right and we think we “should” be happy, so you search for the next thing.

So many of us are chasing happiness, but what we actually want is meaning. Happiness is present-focused. It’s about feeling good right now. But happiness is fleeting. You cannot keep something that is fleeting in place via simple desire to want to keep it in place.

When people assemble furniture themselves — even badly, even with frustration, even when they could have bought it pre-made — they value it more. Not because they enjoyed the process. We all know that assembling cheap furniture isn’t fun, I spent days on designing and building my wardrobe and I didn’t enjoy a second of it. But the struggle itself creates attachment and perceived value, even if its slowly falling apart and jammed with clothing. This is called the Ikea effect, its not happiness we truly chase permanence for, it’s meaning.

And that’s the thing; we keep trying to engineer friction out of our lives. But friction is what creates meaning in the first place. The hard parts aren’t obstacles to a good life — they’re what make the good parts register at all. A meaningful life isn’t built by feeling good all the time, by seeking permanence in happiness, cause without a doubt happiness will never equate to permanence, or desperately trying to reach the next best thing, it’s built by appreciating what we have, by focusing on our already full cup and making sure it doesn’t overflow.

If you cup is already full, why not take a minute to drink and enjoy what you already have, before reaching for the jug to fill your cup again. You can always have more, but why not when there’s room to fill your cup again?