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If there is any want, any craving in me, it is to have an uneventful day, over and over. If there is anything the world is hell-bent on stealing from me, it is the opportunity to do so. And because of this, some part of me is furious at the world, and no matter what happens, it always will be. That is what it is to be a man, even today, yes, even today, as I sit and write these words. It is to be needed, and it is to be needed to grow up a little bit earlier.

I wish they had let us stay children for a little longer. All men I know could have used another year, and if that was too much, another month, and if that was too big an ask still, then a day. A day would have sufficed, too. And this is what all men ever want: a day without being needed or required to do things. And silently at that: there is little vocabulary for the troubles of a man, and if there were enough words, most would not know where to begin. But all men I know have grown up too quickly. I see this in the stories of my father. I watch this in my brother and my friends. I find this in the stranger at the bar at the airport who is from a world apart and tells me the same story I have heard over and over.

But we may not ask, we may not ask another question lest we be showered with opinion and so much more, yet not be granted what we silently beg for, never receive the thing we truly long for: a day without being needed, without being directed, a day without our marching orders, a day in the sun with no one calling out for us. To be a man is to nod in agreement at the world and say, “I will get it done.” Even today, yes, even today. To be a man is to look at your father getting old and, for all the talk all around you, know that you’re living the same life he had, only in a different flavour.

It is to lend a hand to it all, day by day, yet, be remembered for what you could not do. All boys I have ever known have grown up too quickly. Callouses on their hands and ache in every corner of their body, most men I know still ask, “how can I help you?”

When I woke up, I wanted to lie down on the lounger and read for a bit. It was a Saturday, and while I was not sick now, I was still awfully tired. In many ways, I am almost always awfully tired. It does not stop me from living my life. Some of us have exhaustion running through us like blood. We do not deem it a different state of being. I looked at the lounger, and it was flooded with clothes I was yet to move to the cupboard. They had been there for a few days now, and each day I had told myself I would do it the next day. Now, the day had come, and I could not read. With the sigh that accompanies all adults forced into doing a chore, one by one, I folded and kept all the clothes in the almirah, each in its proper place. And now, the lounger was clear, but my motivation to read had waned entirely, so I made some coffee and sat down to write instead.

When I had written a little, and I felt distracted, I got off the chair and stood on the balcony with the cup of coffee that never leaves my side. I looked at the tree in the building complex beside mine. I often look at it for no reason in particular. It was still completely green, and this disappointed me a little. It meant how autumn still had some time before it was fully here. It was time before we would start seeing it in the leaves on the ground in all flavours of green and brown, in pumpkin spice lattes and hot chocolates, in the evening breeze that never seizes, in the scarves and the jackets, and in things large and small. It was still a bit before autumn.

All life is waiting for things to happen, and when they arrive, waiting for other things. For a long time, I have waited for calm and peace, and now that I have some semblance of it, I now wait for the seasons to change. A person must wait for something. To wait for things, to do it patiently is the definition of living. I am alive because I am waiting for something to happen. I am alive as long as there is this wait. To be alive is to look forward to something.

I do not have anything else to say about grief except that there comes the point when it becomes a muted tone in the background. Like the September sky, it takes a dull blue hue and stays far away from the big picture but is also a part of it. The parts inadvertently broken and hastily put together still have cracks in them, but like how things that once irk you become invisible given enough time, the cracks have disappeared too. The ones which have not yet done so are covered in plants and leaves. Anything that breaks becomes a good home for a plant. That has to mean something. I may not be sure what that means, but it says something much bigger than me and my life.

But that is all I can say about grief. I do not see much of it; the little that is perennial is so invisible that I could not tell you which parts of me still hurt. Beyond that, all I see is life, sprouting in all corners of my being, all cracks I could not fill, and all days of future and past. At some point, talking about grief becomes like the sixth drink you have at a party; there is little reason for it, and you do not much need it, so you realise it is only going with the flow. Like all drinks, one must know how much grief one can handle. Like all booze shared with the right people, one may realise they can take more than they thought.

Now, I wait ardently for the year to end. There is, of course, no reason for this want. In many ways, I want this year to end only because I would not want to entertain the possibility of things going wrong. Even preservation can wish for the end of things. If I could, I would like to make camp and stay here forever.

But we must be careful when wishing for things; I am a realistic optimist. As quickly as things can get better, they can also get worse. I shall make a statement as bold as this once we tuck December away into an archive of things that have happened to us and, if life is willing, of how we happened to things.

That is all the more reason to relish in this calm joy of muted greens and subtle blues between summer and autumn. It may get worse; let us laugh now. We will not remember our worries, but the echoes of our joy will always pull us through.

I woke up feeling much better than I had in the evening before. A little ache in the body and temperature can do that to you. But even though I had woken up feeling better, I was still languid and slow. And so, I did not write until the day had gotten on already. It was afternoon. It began to rain. I was not expecting it. I was not expecting many things, yet here we are, and yet, this is my life. It is rare to get what you expect, but that does not make it better. In fact, I feel in most cases, it makes it worse. To get what you wanted—what a tragedy. Most life happens in the gap between the wants and what is received in the end. The trick, as there always is a trick with things like these, is to accept it kindly. If it rains on a September afternoon, you must smile at it; if you expect rain and it is sunny, you must do the same. We rarely get what we expect; most life is lived this way; it is the only way to live.

It is evening now, and this is a day like countless others, but that does not make it worse, as most would think. In fact, it only makes it perfect. To have the same day over and over again may be tedious for many, but it is a blessing. When nothing goes wrong, we must stop and acknowledge it.

The world is coloured in the sweet sepia of the sun setting behind the haze of the city, and here I sit with my coffee, working. What a life, I tell myself. I will remember this day, or at least gather a vague memory of it years from now. It will be when things get tumultuous and turbulent. Amidst all the chaos, I will find a moment to sit down as one usually does, and I will tell myself: what a day that was; nothing happened that day; it was a blessing in disguise.

It always is a blessing in disguise.

I remember being separated from the group on our hike at some point. It was a tiny moment, almost a split-second, where it was just me and the view in all its entirety. September, I thought to myself, how you always start so beautifully. The closer we get to the year’s end, the more reflective we tend to become. There seems to be a global agreement over this. As much as I’d like to argue that time and calendars are a human construct, even without them, even if we just saw the seasons flip to the next like a picture book, we’d still feel the same way. It is only that now, with all our language and vocabulary of time, we get to remark over how September begins like a tiny affair, like the first light from behind the clouds, like the steam from a kettle hissing and popping on a pleasant evening. It is only when we call it something that we can talk about it in earnest. And yet, even if we could not, we would still feel the same things.

But for now, I have the words. I have the words, and I can say to September: I’m glad to meet you again, old friend, and again, we shall sit and wait, for December is far away still. There is still time, and we can make the best of it. It is September. This is where we say, “oh wow, that was a glorious year, but there is a chill in the air now; let us take our jackets out; it may get colder.”

I can say this and so much more. What a luxury it is to have a word for almost everything: to be able to stand on the balcony wearing a jacket, staring at a hazy sky and watching it slowly adorn itself pink, and to mumble, “there is nothing more beautiful than the September sky getting ready for the night.” There is nothing more beautiful, of course, but language gets close. I can say whatever I want to say, as I want to say it.

There is an agreement that it is September, that we all feel the chill in the air. There is an agreement that we must handle our affairs, attenuate the loose ends, and wrap the threads still unrolling for December is near. But it has not arrived just yet. There is still time. There is still time.

It’s all ebb and flow—all of it: the way your heart beats, the way you love, the days you have, the coffee you make. It’s never the same, and it’s always getting better, or it’s getting worse, but it’s never the same. If you must keep anything in mind, it’s this; you must remember this. Scribble it on a piece of paper and lock it in a wooden box hidden deep in your heart: it is never the same. I will never feel the same way I am feeling about everything again. It will always be a smidge higher or a smidge lower, and that will be just about it. In statistics, we often say how a number alone is useless, that unless you can compare it with something, it is neither high nor low. It is how it is with your heart, too. Everything that you feel right now will either be higher or lower in comparison to something. All life is but a comparison to either what was before or what we can imagine, both of which are not absolutes, no matter how sure we are of them. The things that have happened before are not accurate yardsticks, and what you can imagine will always be finite to your lived experience. Life does not pay heed to your history, nor does it care for your powers of imagination. It unfolds as it wants, flows where it wants, and the only thing in your purview is to go with it.

It takes some of us twenty-five years to learn this; for some, it takes their lives, but you cannot compare it with each other. You learn it when you learn it; it’s never too early or too late. It’s never on time, either. It’s only there one day. Whatever you do with it is up to you, but it’s never too early or too late. That much is set in stone, and that much is all you need to go forth, and that is all I can say to you. That is all anyone can say to anyone. What they must do with it is up to them in the end. What we do with anything is up to us, but the trick is to keep doing something. It may ebb and flow, but you must scramble and do something. You must keep doing something. That’s how you stay afloat. When you stay afloat long enough, you’ll know it’s never the same, that it’s always getting better or it’s getting worse, but it’s always going; it’s always going.

I found a note scribbled from a few days ago. I believe this was written in a state of extreme inebriation, both from the contents and the glaring presence of errors in how I wrote it. It goes: I have reason to believe, at some point, my life becomes a drunken story told after a beer too many; this is not unfounded, and I do not mind this one bit.

Of course, this is a version of the note tidied up. I would not want to share the unkempt words, and even if I have no reason not to do that, I feel all notes are eventually turned into writing, so it is unfair to share them as they were written unless the original writer is dead and not present to write the words as they were thought to be.

I believe I wrote it at a barbecue party; I believe amidst the beers and the conversation, there was also a lot of dancing. We danced around a fire and jumped over it when things got crazier. At some point, everything becomes a haze, like the smoke from the fire that engulfed the edge of the hill we were on. And what of the drinking? While I don’t remember much, I remember it went on as it should have. Of course, we can all stop drinking and jumping around fires and having the grandest time in the world, but where is the fun in that and if there is, why have it when it’s the same either way? There is destruction in so many of us. It pays to let it out in bursts of impromptu dancing around fires, roasting food, and laughing like there’s no tomorrow, lest we set fire to our lives instead. I remember most of what I remember; the parts in between get hazy.

But I remember closing my eyes and taking in the moment around me. I remember imagining how it may look as a memory. I remember very clearly that I did this, that I tried to think of it like days long gone, that I was older, and that I had this story to tell everyone now. I pictured myself telling this with the nostalgia burning in my eyes, quite like the fire we danced around. I imagined it all, and now that I think of it, that was when I wrote it down:

I have reason to believe, at some point, my life becomes a drunken story told after a beer too many; this is not unfounded, and I do not mind this one bit.

Now that I have cleaned the house and calculated how much money I spilt on booze in the past week, I can sit down and write properly. Nothing much has changed in the apartment; the desk is the same, the grass is the same, and so are the hills. A mushroom decided to sprout in one of the pots, perhaps, to keep one of the plants company. Nothing much has changed besides that, except that even with every window and door sealed, there was dust on everything when I entered, but that is irrelevant and, if anything, expected. When untouched, almost all things gather dust, even memories. As I sit here and write these words, it occurs to me how there was so much of myself I had forgotten and so much that came to light when I found myself outside this apartment and this town. This trip halfway across the world has done nothing but dust these parts off. And now that they are out in the open, I shall try to make good use of them. In the Tatra mountains, I felt closer to home than ever before, and also in them did I find new perspective. With each step and each word shared, I now know how every part of me fits together better than ever before.

As much as I am against any sort of predestination in life, I believe you sometimes get the feeling. Sometimes, you hike across a mountain range and see a stranger walking towards you, who raises their hand and says cześć to you as you pass them by. And you start thinking about how every decision, large or small, made in your life led to that hello. Even if one little thing had gone differently, you might never have been on this trail, or even if you had, you would still not cross each other. It is baffling how we rarely stop to think about these things. And what if everything is chaotic? Then, we must pay even more attention. If it is about probabilities and permutations, then I am lucky to have experienced everything I have in this life. The odds of it happening were impeccably low, yet all of this has happened. All of it really happened.

The pull of a good day in a good life is incredible. This unshakeable feeling, this weird urge that you cannot shake off. The persistent itch you cannot scratch. You stand in a warm pool with nothing but peace about every corner of your existence, and then you continue to tell people: this feels like paradise, but I miss my days.

Over and over, you think about this, and when the thinking gets a bit too much, you say it out loud, only for someone else to nod in agreement. At that moment, you know there is another one like you, but it does not matter; you are still stuck in paradise. It does not matter how many of you there are; at some point, the urge to come back takes over, and nothing stands in front of it. What is this about home that pulls us back so ardently? Perhaps, it is how hard the feeling comes about.

Home feels so important simply because it exists. It takes a long time to come into this existence, and even with all that it cannot offer, it offers something incomparable. To have a home is to want to go back, into your days, into your life, at all times, from all places. To feel at home in your life is to want to live it consciously. I miss my days when I am not living them, and when I am in them, I am wholly engulfed without a moment to think. What else is there to want in life? I sit alone at the airport, stuck for another half a day, waiting to get home.

As the football game echoes in the bar and drops of frost trickle about my pint of beer, I ponder over how there is so much to see and want, how life has so much to offer. But perhaps, it is only worth going somewhere when you have somewhere to come back to. Perhaps, it is only worth having special days when you have the rut to compare them to, and even in it, we must take pride. It is far too challenging to build stability than people give each other credit for; it is perhaps the most difficult thing a person must do.

Over and over, you think about this, and when the thinking gets a bit too much, you say it out loud, only for someone else to nod in agreement. At that moment, you know there is another one like you, but it does not matter; you are still stuck in paradise. It does not matter how many of you there are; at some point, the urge to come back takes over, and nothing stands in front of it. What is this about home that pulls us back so ardently? Perhaps, it is how hard the feeling comes about.

Home feels so important simply because it exists. It takes a long time to come into this existence, and even with all that it cannot offer, it offers something incomparable. To have a home is to want to go back, into your days, into your life, at all times, from all places. To feel at home in your life is to want to live it consciously. I miss my days when I am not living them, and when I am in them, I am wholly engulfed without a moment to think. What else is there to want in life? I sit alone at the airport, stuck for another half a day, waiting to get home.

As the football game echoes in the bar and drops of frost trickle about my pint of beer, I ponder over how there is so much to see and want, how life has so much to offer. But perhaps, it is only worth going somewhere when you have somewhere to come back to. Perhaps, it is only worth having special days when you have the rut to compare them to, and even in it, we must take pride. It is far too challenging to build stability than people give each other credit for; it is perhaps the most difficult thing a person must do.

Maybe, anyone can be lost; but to have a home is to be found over and over again.

With the overview of the world in all senses of the word, I think of life, and only one word comes to mind: somehow. If someone asked me how I got here, to this pocket of peace, I would only shrug my shoulders and say, “somehow,” and that’s how it is on most days. Somehow, someway, we get wherever we get to, and no matter how much we plan for it or how little we anticipate them, things happen. This does not mean there is no control in our hands, and it would be outright wrong for me, especially me, to suggest such a notion. But perhaps, there is a beginning to it all. It all begins to change only when you seek to change.

The first step in this newfound happiness was the admitting. It was when I sat at a table in a bumbling cafe, surrounded by food and friends. It was then that I had, after trying all I could, admitted that I was miserable, that something had to change. All that was over a year ago. A year is a long time for things to change, and somehow, they do. But first, we must want them to change. Often, that is the hardest step. There is a sort of love between a man and his misery. There is camaraderie you have with demons you’ve had for as many years as you’ve had your friends. Some parts of you are lost when you begin walking towards happiness, too. But you must take it; you must take the step if you want things to change somehow.

Somehow—it’s a funny word because we spend our days thinking we know what we’re doing, and when we look back at the months and the years, and when someone asks you a step-by-step of how you did it, you cannot even begin to think how. You remember where you began, and from that point on, things start rolling into one another. And you barely have an answer for them, and then they look at you, baffled and confused, as if you don’t have a clue about what you’re doing. But you do. You know precisely what you were doing: walking away from yourself.

Sometimes, that is only how things begin to change. You start walking away from yourself, and somehow, you arrive wherever you do. That’s how it plays out, but what would I know? I don’t know much about how I got here. One day, I opened my eyes, and I was here, somehow.

I sit at the airport, waiting for something to happen. I wait here, wanting to get home. At a loss for words, I take another sip of the coffee. It occurs to me how airport coffee tastes the same no matter where you are flying from. It is always burnt, and while there is a certain quality to it, it is far too lost in the charred aftertaste. This is testament to the human spirit. We always manage to ruin things the same way. On a makeshift desk—my suitcase—and a terrible cup of coffee, I sit writing about yet another irrelevant musing, and something still tells me this is important. It may not be important to anyone else, but to me, this is all that matters in the end. This is it, I tell myself; this is my moment; this is my element. This suspension of life, between all this busyness, this is where we sit, pretending to be artists. No one is an artist until it’s a little too late. No one is an artist before their time. Until then, it’s all pretend.

Bad as it may be, the coffee has breathed new life into these hands of mine. It makes me think how even the worse things are, perhaps, not so bad in the end. All things find a way to do what they are supposed to do. We cannot know much about the world and how it works, but we can know this: it all makes sense at some point. If there is anything I can think of life, it’s how abundant, how beautifully abundant it has become, and how effortless! Often, it does not occur to us how miserable we are until someone touches the mosaic where it’s cracked. This does not mean the misery isn’t there; it only means it is hidden well enough under the colours. Until someone pushes into the crack and marks the beginning of a catastrophe. Over time, you learn how this, too, was a favour.

I think of last autumn as I sit at the cusp of another. It is a remarkable thing when the pages of life ruffle into something new. And I only think of how there is nothing but more, more, and more. It is going to be an incredible life. It has been an incredible life. There is little else to say. There is always little to say when you’re happy, but you must say something. You must always say something.

It is always what you don’t do that you regret or, at least, ruminate over. We remember a beautiful view, and we often think of how we should’ve gazed more, of how we should have looked closely at parts of the scenery we can’t much recall. It has been my realisation that when in doubt, it is best to say yes, regardless of how many How To… books in the bookstores tell me otherwise. It may be sound advice, but not all advice that seems sensible is good for you. If everyone in the world followed all sensible advice, they would not do half the things they managed to do. Most of what we do is a rebellion against what makes sense. Most life happens in the little window you overcome hesitation in. All good stories begin with: I know it makes little sense.

If someone had asked me in spring, even though it had blossomed bountifully, whether I would spend the beginning of autumn in another corner of the world, I would have said they were out of their mind. But then again, most life is about embracing the possibility of all things. Hiking over a trail with newfound friends who each have a unique way of looking at the world, for people seldom look at things in the same way, I thought over a lot of things, but most of all, I thought about the moment of inflexion. And the more I thought about it, as we crossed one picturesque landscape after another, the more I could see only one word: yes. It is in saying yes to most things that life blossoms like the spring I laughed away all those months ago. It is in saying yes that I am here. And wherever I go next, only my subtle agreement will take me there.

Things start to change the moment you entertain the possibility. The yes, the word itself comes much, much later. It is but a way to seal the deal; on most occasions, the decision is already made when you start pondering. That’s the trick to serendipity: you entertain all thoughts, and when something in you begs to say yes, you do it, regardless of how inane it sounds.

There is little that makes sense in this thing we call life, but if there’s anything that does, it’s that all good stories begin the same way.

The way we look at things dictates what things are; there is no one world; there are only ways to look at it. Something in me compels me to look at the commonalities of all things in the world. It is easier for me to stare at a bee buzzing around my drink and think of how that has something to say about how we are slaves to what we crave than it is for me to think of how a bee is a nuisance, and I must hush it away. It is how we are built that builds the world around us. I see common ground where there is none, similarity where there is nothing but difference. For better or worse, the world will forever look like this to me: a stream of intersections where everything affects everything. I often think about what came first: this disposition against difference or my relentless hope for all of us. I wonder which caused which, and like a classic chicken and egg problem, we shall not know until much, much later.

For now, I sit in a place, not unlike the one I come from; surely, the words are different, and from what I can gather, the bees prefer rum. Still, there is more around me that makes me feel like I have always been here, and if not, that I could be here and be the same person I am right now for as long as I stay the way I am. But I will change, and so will how I look at things. If there is something I have learned in this life that finds a way to surprise me when I least expect it, it is that it all begins with time. The times change, changing us in the process, and when we change, so does the world. People think it is the other way round, that the world changed them, but that is seldom the case. Even learning a new word makes it appear everywhere. Most things are behind invisible veils, hidden only by what we choose not to see. That does not mean they are not there; it only means we see less than we think we do.

And if we look closely, and if we look at the bigger picture, and if we somehow manage to do it together, we can often get a peek through the curtain. It is when we see how it’s all the same. But what do I know? I only see what I see. Someone else may see nothing but difference, and being as I am, I will find something in common with them, too.

There is a lot to say about life, but there is little to talk about when someone asks you how it’s going. If it’s going good, you don’t want to jinx it and say it out loud, and if it’s going bad, why talk about it after all? And then, there is a space between the two. There i s the quiet you can talk about, as ironic as it seems. There is a lot you can say about it. When someone asks you about life, you can tell them about lush green grass, you can talk about blue skies, and if life allows, you can talk about the hearty meal and the conversation before it, and if you’re not as drunk as people like me tend to get, you can talk about the conversation after it. But almost always, when someone asks you how you got here, you would not have an answer. Happiness has no route. But to arrive, you must continue walking. That’s the oldest trick in the book.

And of walking? It was past midnight, and the trams had stopped moving about Krakow—at least the trams that could have taken us home. So we wandered over the cobblestone streets under the rainy sky of August. Perhaps, there was hope for us yet. We decided to cut across the Rynek Glowny, but our hotel was still far away. Our mission was simple, if there ever was one, but I could not put it in words better than the ones my newfound friends had used: we only have to walk five to six blocks. Of course, that was not the case. But life is not about truth, as it appears; it is about hope. Hope is about walking five or six blocks and continuing to do that until you reach wherever you are trying to go. That is all it is about: walking five to six blocks until you’re surrounded by laughter and beer and people who are ready to teach you all about their language. I believe if there is any happiness, if there is any middle, it is in this: people you can drink with and when everyone’s drunk enough, they can probably teach you a few words.

Perhaps, it does not get any better than this, and if it does, I would not know it. I would not know it at all.

How would you say that? It’s a common question you ask when you meet someone who speaks a different language or comes from a place absolutely unlike your own. And then, when you have the pronunciation down, you realise you meant the same thing after all. And this happens over and over again, regardless of how many people you meet and irrespective of where you meet them. That’s the human experience. That is what you cannot take away from us—the common folk, who have control over embarrassingly little, and who still try to make the world better. The people laugh the same way. They get drunk the same way. And everyone wants a rum and coke at some point, jet-lagged as they may be, even if they need a friend to tell the bartender they need one. There is no replacing this, no matter where you go in the world, and anyone who tells you otherwise can show themselves the exit. To the rest of us, I say salut and salud and cheers and prost and na zdrowie.

“How would you say that?” I ask now and then when I sit around people who are like me in more ways than it seems at first, and “how would you say that?” my new friend from a country far away mumbles before he finds the word for whatever he is trying to convey. There seems to be a long distance between all places that have ever existed, but if you are stubborn enough, the middle ground seems to not be so far away, either. All feelings exist in all places, and all places have some way to convey them. There is little else to say when everything has been said before, but when you’ve been thinking for far too long along the same lines, a change of pace is a good shuffle. It shakes you up; it tells you there is more to it all; that there always has been more to it all.

But all of it can be said, and most of it begins with the most common question of all: how would you say that?

To have a wonderful day and not have anyone to tell about it is a tragedy. We rarely remember our days for how they felt but how we told the story. If there’s no one to tell the story to, the days fade into nothingness. Most of your days will fade into nothingness. To tell someone about the tiny pleasures, the large wonders, and given they have the time, everything in between—that is all we need. Most happiness begins and ends the moment this happens, the moment you share it with someone else. That is the only function of happiness: sharing.

Nothing is more irksome than the moment when you feel nothing but umpteen joy, and you cannot find anyone to tell the story to. It is why we click pictures. It is why we must share them with others, no matter how blurry the picture is, irrespective of how it may capture but a smidge of the glory, and on most occasions, fail to do even that. It is not the picture that is beautiful; it is what you say about it, how your eyes glow up, how you go into a craze of the memory. It is in those things that the purpose of a picture is fulfilled. Everything else is high, elitist art—no one understands or cares about it. All else is a selfish, meaningless pursuit. It is the poor pictures that make the most sense. They show the urgency; they capture the moment.

As I sit here by myself, ruminating on a beautiful sunrise I witnessed from over thirty-thousand feet in the sky in the brightest version of my life, I think of the pleading. I think of how I begged and said I needed some time; I think of how true it all was, of how true it had always been. Just some time and trust is all most people ever need. Many have to beg for them; few ever receive them; things happen regardless, and life goes on anyway. The only change is in who is there to watch them along with you. The only difference is who you share the stories with and who gets the blurry picture of a sunrise. Pain is easy to share; it makes for good poetry. Life is all about sharing happiness; it is about who you share it with.

I sit in the most crowded cafe I can find in the mall’s centre on a Friday evening. I do this by myself with a cup of hot americano in the corner section of the cafe. The table stands by itself, facing the faceless silhouettes of shoppers scurrying and straggling, passing the bar-like table. At first, this seems to be a rather unwise decision. Other writers would tell you it’s too loud and chaotic, with their snarky remarks about consumerism, the stream of distraction of the whistling industry-grade machine, and the faux hellos echoing over and over like some sick simulation. But all that, all of it, is an excuse. If I have learned only one thing about what we do as writers, it’s that you can write as well in a silent room as you can in a buzzing hive of cash and credit. You can write in places that look and feel the same, regardless of what city you go to, and you can write with terrible coffee as you can with which tastes like heaven.

If there is anything I have learned, it is that there is only one way to do it. I’ve learned that it is as simple as sitting at a random table in some cafe and doing it, and I have learned it is as complex as managing to focus on the words ahead of you. That is how all writing is done: one word at a time. The page is coloured in marks of black, and slowly, it seems like something is there, but you begin with one word. That’s how you start, and that’s how you end.

My father often tells me driving well is about driving well for a hundred metres over and over again. I still don’t know how to drive a car. I don’t know a lot of things. I don’t know how to cook anything besides a few eggs and some pasta. I don’t yet know how to find love and keep it. Be that as it may, I know what I know: I know how to write; I know to take bits and pieces, these bookmarks from my life, and eternalise them, one word at a time. In the end, I may not amount to much. Perhaps, nothing great will come out of my hands. But these words, these vignettes torn right out of my days, will have something to say.

And if, in the end, they say nothing worthwhile, then that is what my life will stand for—no more, no less—but it will all happen one word at a time.

It was a muggy night yesterday, or at least, I remember thinking this before I slept. It’s too warm, I remember saying to myself. I woke up in the middle of my sleep, craving water. The bottle beside me was empty, so I got up, my eyes almost fully closed. Trusting muscle memory, I walked to the kitchen groggily but just then, I saw this golden glow emanating from outside the curtains.

At first, I thought this was all a dream, that I may very well be still sound asleep in my bed, and this quest for some water was some twisted game concocted by my mind. But then, I peeked through the curtain to see the glow was real. I was still thirsty, and this was no dream, so I went to the kitchen, filled my bottle up, and went into the balcony to witness the most beautiful sunrise. A tinge of yellow over everything, as if a light coat of watercolour had taken over the world, and since no one had woken up yet, there was a soft silence about everything.

I stood there, sipping water and looking at the sun and the hills. In that moment, entirely engulfed by the sheer peace ahead of me, I did not want anything else but to stand there, and so I did just that. I came back in, the room was still dark and cosy, and I decided to sleep a little more, thinking about how serendipitous life is in all its little and large ways. There is nothing else you need but a little randomness and a little urge to get a glass of water in the middle of your sleep, and it can change everything.

You do not remember much—all memories fade into nothingness—but you remember stories like these. You tell people about them for years, and they stare at you, puzzled and perplexed. It was only a sunrise, they tell you. Be that as may, you reply, it changed everything still, not that I knew it at the time. Not that we ever really know. But there is a feeling, and often, that is enough.

I woke up terribly late and rushed through to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, but over this six-step stretch, I slowed down and began to laugh instead. I made coffee and carried it to the desk while smelling it; it smelled like a potpourri of hope and happiness. In these days, when none of me is hidden, when all of who I am is out and about, and there is no schism between who I want to be and who I am, I see life for what it is: it is an exercise in patience. I suppose all we do here is about waiting, and one must wait patiently. I have waited for so much; I have seen it come to pass in odd, mysterious ways. Like a lonely house in a field that no one visits until someone stumbles upon it on a rainy day, every wait has a purpose. I have waited for so much more; I have had my heart sink deeper than the heaviest rock you can toss into the sea, but all things wash ashore eventually. I have found myself stranded on the beach alone and tired, waiting still. For all the wait we have in life, we are often in an unfounded rush. Even if you oversleep, there is still the rest of the day to go through. If you are patient and if you look around, much can still happen during the day.

And with this thought, I sat at the desk and began writing. Just then, it occurred to me that the coffee was still hot; there was still time. There was still time, and life was just beginning to unfold. It was a beautiful day—the sun was still out, and the clouds had slowly begun to engulf it. The sky had not yet turned grey, so you could still see the hills, and the birds flew about casually, no sense of urgency in the flaps of their wings. Of course, I had missed some hours of all this, but there was still enough of it left for things to happen. That is all life becomes in the end: waiting for things to happen and then, if you’re patient enough, responding in kind.

These are days of greatness and glory. We do not know it yet, but people seldom do. I think of memoirs, of how the lost generation could only tell their intertwined kinship in hindsight. You read about them, and you wonder: did they know? And of course, they didn’t! They were there to have coffee, to drink and to walk about Paris, but mostly, they were there to write. Most of them kept writing, and now we think of their names, gilded in all the good there is, but they were just people living. That is the most important thing to know about it all. We writers are terribly honest creatures. We do not have the luxury of delusion. We only say the words are good when we’re halfway through them, and it occurs to us that they are.

We need this honesty. Someone who has never read a book will find whatever they read to be good; we must not trust them. And what of those who have read a bit too much? We must not trust them either. Their bearings on the goodness of writing were lost a long time ago. Like one continues brushing teeth, they continue reading—out of habit. And so, we cannot call ourselves good or great before we are, and even then, even if we did reach there, the words will come as they always do. The words will always come hard; they don’t much care for who you are or what you’ve done. To the words, you are simply someone who sits to face the blank page and begins to tell the truth.

I met someone for coffee the other day. She asked me if the words were any good since I had been writing for long enough. I told her they were the same as they have always been. Words were like coffee—there was always some tuning to do. There was always something to fix. There was always more to say, and there was always more to remember. We don’t much know what the greats did differently to get there, but we know they wrote. They wrote until there was no life left in them. There is nothing different about this, and there shouldn’t be.

They read those who came before them, and we read them, and all of us have written. There is kinship in this, too.