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  • I have lost the desire to be seen.

    I have lost the desire to be seen. Not because I dislike people or because I suddenly became shy. If anything, I have simply grown curious about something else. I have spent enough time trying to be visible to realize that visibility is not always what it promises to be.

    For a long time, I thought being seen was the goal. Isn’t that what we are taught in one way or another? Build a presence. Build an audience. Build a profile. Make yourself known. But known for what? That is the question I keep coming back to. Is it enough for people to recognize your face if they cannot recall your work? Is it enough to occupy someone’s attention for a moment if you leave nothing behind in their thoughts?

    The older I get, the more I notice that some of the most influential people in my life were not people I constantly saw. In fact, I often heard of them long before I met them. Their reputation arrived before they did. Their work introduced them before they had the chance to introduce themselves. By the time I encountered them, the seeing almost felt secondary.

    And that made me wonder: why have we become so obsessed with being visible? Why do we treat attention as if it is the final reward? Why do we spend so much time trying to enter people’s sight and so little time trying to remain in their memory? Are those really the same thing?

    There was a time when I wanted my presence to do all the talking. These days, I would rather let my actions handle part of the conversation. Not because I have become mysterious, but because I have grown tired of explaining myself repeatedly. At some point, I started asking whether a person’s work should constantly need a spokesperson. Shouldn’t it be able to stand on its own?

    Perhaps that is why I find more comfort in being heard of than being seen. Being seen often requires you to keep showing up and proving yourself all over again. Being heard of suggests that something you did continued travelling after you left. One depends on your presence. The other depends on your substance.

    I am not disappearing. I am not withdrawing from the world. I am still here. I still have things to say. I still have work to do. But I no longer feel the same urgency to place myself at the centre of every room. What interests me now is a different question: if I were absent from the conversation, would my work still be present in it?

    Maybe that is what changed. I stopped asking, “How many people saw me?” and started asking, “What did they carry away after the encounter?” Because attention is easy to measure, but significance is not. One can be counted. The other has to be felt.

    So no, I do not crave visibility the way I once did. I prefer something quieter. I prefer to be heard of. Heard about. Heard through the things I have built, written, contributed, and left in motion. Not because being seen has no value, but because I have discovered that not everything important needs an audience in order to matter.

  • One Stupid Move Could Really Mess the Rest of Your Life

    One stupid move could really mess the rest of your life.

    Not every mistake carries the same weight some cost you a few minutes of embarrassment but others cost you “the rest of your life.”

    The funny thing is that most life-changing mistakes rarely announce themselves they arrive disguised as small decisions. A quick reaction. A moment of anger. A shortcut. A choice made because everyone else was doing it. A decision made without thinking beyond the present moment. Then boom you’re into a lifelong regret.

    That is why wisdom is not just about knowing what is right. It is about understanding consequences.

    The Power of Knowing Your “Why”

    Many people assume that life is shaped by grand achievements and major milestones but in reality, life is often shaped by ordinary choices repeated over time. The people we allow close to us. The habits we entertain. The words we speak when emotions are high. The opportunities we ignore. The responsibilities we postpone.

    A single careless decision can become a chapter you spend years trying to rewrite.

    That doesn’t mean we should live in fear. Mistakes are part of being human. Every person has regrets. Every person has moments they wish they could revisit. The goal is not perfection. The goal is awareness.

    Before making a decision, it helps to ask a simple question:

    “If this goes wrong, am I prepared to live with the consequences?”

    That question has saved many people from unnecessary trouble.

    The world often celebrates spontaneity. It tells us to act fast, follow feelings, and worry about tomorrow later. But experience teaches a different lesson. Tomorrow always arrives. And when it does, it brings the bill for today’s choices.

    Some decisions deserve more thought than excitement.

    Because while one stupid move could really mess the rest of your life, one wise decision can also change it for the better.

  • Has Respect Changed, or are we screwed?

    Lately, I have been noticing something that I find quite interesting. It is not something I can prove with statistics, and it is not meant to criticize or generalize an entire generation. It is simply an observation from conversations, social media interactions, workplaces, and everyday life.

    When I talk about this observation, I am mainly referring to Generation Z and the younger generations following behind them. Of course, not everyone fits into the same pattern, but there seems to be a noticeable shift in how respect, manners, and authority are understood. Whether that shift is good or bad is open to debate, but the difference is difficult to ignore.

    As someone who was raised in the 1990s and learned most of my manners in the early 2000s, I grew up with a certain understanding of respect. We were taught to greet people properly, listen before speaking, and acknowledge the experience of those who had walked further in life than we had. Respect was not about fear or blind obedience. It was about recognizing that every person had something worth learning from.

    Today, I sometimes feel as though that understanding is changing. It is not that manners have disappeared completely. Rather, they seem to have evolved into something different. Confidence, self-expression, and equality appear to carry more weight than the traditional ideas many of us grew up with.

    One thing I have noticed is that authority often receives more respect than experience. People may respect a position, a title, or influence, yet age and experience alone no longer seem to carry the same automatic recognition they once did. Social media has made this especially visible. It is now common to see younger people openly challenge elders, teachers, professionals, and public figures. Sometimes those challenges are justified, and sometimes they are not. What stands out is how normal this has become.

    Before going any further, I should make it clear that these thoughts are not coming from a right-wing or left-wing perspective. They come from a place of observation. I try to keep an open mind when looking at society and the changes happening around us. Whether these changes are positive, negative, or simply different is not for me to decide. What interests me is the impact they are having on the way people relate to one another.

    I also think the internet has played a role in this shift. Information is more accessible than ever before. Young people can learn things in minutes that previous generations might have spent years searching for. That confidence can be a good thing. Every generation benefits when people think for themselves. At the same time, knowledge and respect do not have to compete with one another. A person can be informed, disagree strongly, and still remain courteous.

    In a previous article, I mentioned that I do not believe age alone should be the condition for respect. I still believe that. To me, respect should be extended to everyone, from the youngest child to the oldest adult. Every person deserves dignity, and every person has something they can teach us.

    Perhaps what older generations see as a loss of respect, younger generations see as confidence and equality. Perhaps both sides are seeing only part of the picture. The world has changed rapidly over the last two decades, and it would be surprising if those changes did not affect the way we interact with one another.

    I do not write this as a judgment. I write it as someone who enjoys watching life, listening to people’s experiences, and paying attention to the small changes happening around us. The question I keep coming back to is this:

    Has respect itself changed, or has its meaning simply changed with the times?