Kunal Gupta's Blog, page 2

How to Be Remembered

Recently, I found myself in a quiet corner of the Portuguese countryside, surrounded by twenty-five of my closest friends.

Some who have known me for decades, others more recently. All of them, in one way or another, had walked by my side through different chapters of life. They came from different cities, Sydney, London, Toronto, and New York, to be with me to celebrate my upcoming birthday.

Some had seen me stumble, some had seen me rise. Many had seen me change.

There was light agenda for the weekend. My partner had taken the lead in organizing it, and somehow, the lack of structure allowed space for something far more meaningful to arrive. People connected easily, as if they had been meant to meet, as if the story of my life had been stitched together into the kind of gathering that needed no explanation.

Lately, I’ve been working with a coach on developing a five-year vision. The intention behind it feels simple but daunting: to develop clarity as I enter a new decade, to deepen alignment between where I place my energy and define what truly matters for me right now. One of the exercises in this process involved writing my own obituary.

At first, I struggled. The very notion felt strange. But surprisingly, what unlocked the exercise was asking ChatGPT to write a first draft based on what it knew about me. Reading what it generated created space for me to respond. Not with edits, but with presence. Soon after, I wrote my own version. I shared it with my coach. We reflected that while it captured my own perspective, it felt incomplete.

Not long ago, my aunt passed away. After the funeral, my parents called me. They spoke not about the sadness, but the beauty of the words shared about her. And then they said something that stayed with me: “Why do we only share these kinds of things after someone is gone? They should hear them while they’re still here.”

Back to the birthday weekend away with my friends now. Halfway through the weekend, I made a spontaneous announcement.

I would host my own funeral. A living one.

My friends were surprised, but after a moment of it sitting in, not surprised to hear that I would want to experiment with something like this.

A friend stepped in to facilitate. He split our group of twenty-five into smaller groups. Each group was handed post-it notes and pens and asked to write a eulogy for me. Not from prepared thoughts, but from spontaneous presence. No time to rehearse, only time to reflect and write.

While they wrote, he and I set up chairs for everyone outside beneath a wide patch of sky, with a beautiful view of rolling hills.

After about thirty minutes, everyone was invited into our makeshift space. Music was playing in the background. My partner and I sat at the front. And then, one by one, each group sent one person forward to read what they had written.

Some were funny. Some were tender. Some wrapped kindness in mischief and others unwrapped truths through tears. They spoke about curiosity, calm, and kindness. About presence over performance. One spoke about patience. Another about wonder. There was much laughter, and shared stories I had long forgotten.

As I sat there, quietly receiving their words spoken in past tense, I felt something unexpected.

I felt seen. Appreciated. Held. And also… surprised.

None of the eulogies focused on the aspects of life I spend the most time on. My work, my health, and my relationship. Areas that occupy much of my conscious living energy were barely mentioned. Instead, what surfaced were subtler qualities. How I show up in a conversation. The way I create space. How I listen. The lightness I bring, even unknowingly.

Afterwards, debriefing with a few close friends, I shared that observation. And they gently offered a reframe. Perhaps those domains of life I focus on so intensely aren’t ends in themselves. Perhaps they are means. Means to a more authentic self. Means to deeper connection. That the work isn't in being remembered for any one thing, but in being present with who I already am.

And perhaps friends are the ones who see that most clearly.

Family wasn’t there that weekend. Neither were professional colleagues. My partner didn’t speak. What was reflected back to me came from friendship alone. And there’s a particular honesty in that kind of mirror. It’s where nothing needs to be proven. Where the self can be witnessed without the scaffolding of achievement, responsibility or identity. I felt known in a way that words rarely allow. And what I heard, almost universally, were not just stories, but feelings. Unfiltered, unearned, freely given.

At the end of the ceremony, I stood and gave a brief, impromptu speech. No notes. No idea what I was going to say until I heard myself say it. That I am not just me. I am, in some quiet way, made up of every person here. Every strength, every quirk, every moment of laughter I offer to the world is borrowed or mirrored from someone I’ve loved. I spoke of how each of their reflections helped me see myself more clearly. Not as a static thing, but as a living dynamic being, shaped by others with every passing year.

I’m still integrating what happened that weekend. I’m still listening to what was said. And to what wasn’t. I walked away with a full heart and an open question. What are the things I chase now, that in the end may not matter? And what are the things that matter deeply already, but go unnoticed because they ask nothing in return?

I’ll likely do this again. Not as an event. But perhaps as a practice. A way to pause and ask. A way to make space for reflection not just from within, but through the lives I’ve touched and been touched by. Not to be praised, but to be mirrored.

There are truths about my life I can’t see alone.

And that is how I learned to be remembered.

How to Remember

My birthday is approaching. And this one is an important milestone.

I gave myself the summer to develop a five year vision for my life, as I enter a new decade and chapter. Not a rigid one. Not a plan. Something softer.

For much of my life, I’ve lived with a plan. For fifteen years, I led a company as CEO. I planned in quarters and years. That type of planning was tied to outcomes—concrete, prioritized, trackable. This is different.

The starting point for my five year vision surprised me. It wasn’t a question of what I want to build, achieve, or even who I want to become. It began with qualities. Ways of being. Not in the shape of my accomplishments, but in the shape of my presence. It is about how I move through life, regardless of when or where, or even why.

So I started making a list of qualities that are important to me. It came quite easily. Now I am working with my coach to sift through them to discover which ones are the most important to me right now, and relevant to this next chapter of my life.

In a recent conversation with my coach, we shifted from qualities to something else altogether. A prompt he gave me. A writing experiment I hadn’t expected: to write my own living obituary.

Had it come at any other time, I might have hesitated. But the timing made sense. I’d recently been reminded of the idea by Tuesdays with Morrie, a book that I read many years ago. In it, Morrie, a professor facing a terminal illness, hosts a living funeral. He wanted to hear what people will say about him before he dies. A subtle rebellion against a world that waits too long to speak honestly and lovingly.

And recently, my parents returned from the funeral of my aunt. When they spoke about the experience, they kept returning to one observation: how strange it is that we only seem to say these things after death. Why wait? they asked.

So when the prompt came to write my own obituary, I felt a surge of energy pass through me. I had to do it.

I’ve written every week for this blog for over ten years. I journal several times a week privately. I have written four books. Words are a home for me.

However, when it came to writing my living obituary, my page stayed blank.

It’s easy to write about an experience from within it. It’s harder to zoom out, to see myself from the outside. I didn’t know where to begin. Not because there was nothing to say, but because the exercise required looking at myself differently than I am used to. And maybe that was the point. Looking not out at the world, but across my life. Not forwards in time, but backwards.

After a few attempts, I found myself turning to one of my AI assistants, ChatGPT. I gave it a single line: “As part of a reflection exercise, and knowing what you know of me, I’d like your help writing a living obituary.” I wasn’t sure what, if anything, would emerge.

Six seconds later, a draft appeared.

And I sat back. And I read quietly and slowly about my life.

The words held a mix of familiarity and distance. They were about me, but not by me. There were facts about my life, but what surprised me was how present my hidden desires were embedded throughout. My hopes. My aspirations. My dreams. Not written in the usual future tense where they live in my journal and my mind, but in the past tense. As if they had already happened.

It changed something in me.

Sometimes, speaking about the future feels like building a story we may never enter. But reading that future as if it had already occurred, there was a strange intimacy in that. My ambitions felt less speculative, more lived. They felt, for a moment, like memories.

When I journal, there’s always a sense of reaching, into the unknown, toward something unformed. But here, the past tense created a kind of grounding I didn’t expect. A possibility dressed as remembrance.

Of course, the words weren’t perfect. They weren’t mine. But they gave me something to work with. A clay form. I’ve always enjoyed editing, and this now feels like that. A chance to shape. To soften. To reveal. And in doing so, not just to craft a better piece of writing—but to better understand myself in this moment in time. The prompt pointed not to the end of life, but to the center of it.

It reminded me of how powerful it is to pause and look, not forward or inward, but from the imagined edge, backwards. The things that feel vague become visible. What I’ve value begins to reflect back towards me with more light.

The obituary isn’t finished. And neither am I. But what emerged was clarity.

And that is how I learned to remember.

If you are curious to read it, simply reply to this email and I’ll send it to you.

How to Inspire

For the past two weeks, I’ve been alone in Lisbon.

My partner has been away traveling, and without shared presence or familiar routines to anchor the day, my calendar opened up. There were fewer dinners to prepare, fewer invitations to accept, and fewer movements around the city to make. The stillness wasn’t silent, but it was quieter than usual. And in that unexpected space, something unexpected happened.

It didn’t begin with an intention. There was no plan to retreat or reset. But with fewer inputs from the outside, more attention turned inward. I found myself drawn to a new project—an idea I’d been circling for a little while but hadn’t completely stepped into. It's a different kind of creative effort than this blog, but something about it called for exploration. Slowly, then suddenly, I found myself deep inside of it.

I didn’t think of it as work. In fact, I avoided calling it that. Maybe because I wasn't doing it for outcomes. There was no performance to measure, no deadline to meet, no one else waiting beside me. And yet, I was waking up buzzing, energized, thinking about it, and only it. Not with worry, but with possibility.

It felt more like play—like the kind of play I remember from when I was twenty and building my business for the first time. Where the effort comes not from pressure, but from imagination.

Some days, I’d spend hours entirely focused. No phone. No notifications. No email. No stock market. Well fed, well hydrated, and alone with my thoughts. Books piled beside me. YouTube videos queued up. Podcasts paused mid-sentence so an idea could be written down. It was deep work, but also deep learning. Probably the deepest I’ve gone in years.

What surprised me most was not the clarity or the quality of attention, but the energy.

Despite sleeping less, exercising irregularly, and spending less time socializing, I didn’t feel depleted. I felt the opposite. Inspired. Body, mind, heart, and spirit—aligned and alive. Not sustainable, maybe. But also not necessary to sustain forever. Sometimes a sprint is what’s needed. Not to escape life, but to remember a part of it.

The satisfaction didn’t come from anything completed. It came from showing up. Not half-heartedly or cautiously, but fully. There’s something rare these days about giving something everything—not as sacrifice, but as self-expression. To try, just because it feels good to try. Without calculating if it’s worth the time, or whether it will amount to anything. Nothing was owed to it, and yet something inside wanted to keep giving.

Learning like this is harder now than it used to be. Maybe because it feels less urgent. Or maybe because it requires more humility. Being a beginner takes effort. It asks for presence. But when that effort is made not toward mastery, just toward curiosity, the reward isn’t a result. The reward is the trying.

When I would share this burst of energy with friends—when I’d talk about what I was building, what I was reading—I kept hearing the same word back: “inspired.” It made me pause. I hadn’t set out to inspire anyone. That wasn’t the point. But something in how I was living those days had a ripple effect. Not in grand gestures. Just in the quiet way a person lights up when they’re deeply engaged. And how, somehow, we notice.

I’ve experienced this from others before—watching someone follow what moves them, and feeling a subtle ignition inside. Energy transferred without intention. Without knowing. The most inspiring people in my life never tried to be that. They simply were.

At the start of each year, I choose a word. A one-word intention, like a quiet promise to myself. In past years, it's been words like open, space, build, flow. This year, the word was inspire.

Until now, it hadn’t really landed. I hadn’t felt it in a way I could describe. I’d journaled about it. Thought about it. Wondered whether I had chosen the right word. But after these two weeks, something clicked. Not all at once. More like an unfolding. The connection between feeling inspired, and inadvertently being that for others, finally made sense.

None of it happened through striving. That’s the part I keep returning to. The inspiration came through immersion. Through permission. Through less structure, and fewer demands. Less of everything, really—except intention.

And that is how I learned to inspire.

How to Low Stake

A few weeks ago, my aunt passed away.

It was unexpected, yet not surprising. That strange space where the heart is broken open but the mind quietly nods. In the days that followed, we gathered—some in person, others from afar. There were phone calls, shared stories. A mixing of grief with gratitude.

In the quiet that follows loss, emotion makes way for a softer kind of thought. Not strategic planning, not goal setting—just a murmur of something deeper. Something simpler.

A family member said something that's stayed with me: “We all end up in the same place.” There was no drama in her voice, just calm. “We come with nothing, we leave with nothing.” A reminder I’ve heard before, and forgotten before. But in that moment, it felt less like advice and more like gravity. A truth that didn’t require agreement—it simply was.

A few days later, I went for a long walk with an old friend in Lisbon. We hadn’t seen each other in a few years. He’s around my age, maybe a few years older. He walked me through his cancer diagnosis from two years ago, and the many moments of not knowing what would come next. He told me about the strength he had found and the grace he had grown into, uninvited.

When I asked how this experience had changed his perspective on life, he smiled and said what I had just started to touch myself: “Most things aren’t that important.”

That sentence keeps repeating itself.

Most things aren’t that important.

But my mind is good at making most things feel that they are important.

There’s a habit I’ve noticed—one that lives quietly in my day-to-day. The gym session missed and turned into guilt. A stock market trade made, not for the sum of money but for the illusion of control. A late reply to a message, a small tiff in a conversation, or a dinner reservation gone wrong—each one has the potential to feel like more than it is. Like something is at stake. As if a single choice could jeopardize the entire direction of a day, or a life.

There are moments, looking back, where the intensity I felt simply doesn’t make sense. The pressure to finish something. The need to be understood. The desire for things to unfold exactly as imagined. I remember days when, after not meditating “well”, I felt like my entire self-discipline unraveled. As though one “poor” practice erased a decade of showing up.

And yet, there is so much—almost everything, really—that is actually low stakes.

The disappointment of a meal. The annoyance of a flight delay. The frustration of a weak Wi-Fi signal. The uncertainty of a video call that doesn’t load on time. The inconvenient timing of an invitation. The mood shift after a lost sports match. The entire evening revolving around a show on Netflix.

None of it really matters.

But it can feel like it does. I’m slowly seeing that feeling and reality do not always hold hands.

There’s a quiet liberation in remembering that. A freedom made not of apathy, but of perspective.

When I remind myself something is low stakes, I don’t abandon effort. If anything, I feel more curious. More grounded. I allow space for surprise—to be delighted, even.

And what I notice is that on the days I bring that mindset into what I do—whether it's walking into a meeting or ordering a meal—something shifts. I feel more present. More available to life. Less burdened by outcome. There's space for joy to enter, because I’ve stopped blocking the way with anxiety.

The pressure has softened. And in that softening, I can still care. But I no longer have to carry.

These recent brushes with mortality have been hard. And yet, I hold deep appreciation for what they’ve opened. The way they rearranged my perspective without asking permission. The way they trimmed the excess weight of so many imagined crises.

This reflection is a way to remember. A kind of ritual integration. An attempt to stay close to the clarity that only seems to emerge when life itself interrupts the illusion of control.

There is no neat conclusion. Just a clearer horizon. I am inspired to continue to remind myself that things are more often than not low stakes, versus what my mind tries to convince me to believe.

And that is how I learned to low stake.

How to Istanbul

We landed late at night. The taxi from the airport wound through streets we couldn’t see, only feel. The city was there, somewhere beyond the taxi window, but hidden in darkness. There was no sense of arrival, only motion through a place that had yet to appear.

It wasn’t until the next morning that Istanbul revealed itself us. We woke up to the call to prayer echoing loosely across rooftops. My eyes opened to narrow streets filled with cafes, mopeds, clusters of people speaking languages I didn’t recognize. The air carried the scent of warm bread and strong coffee. Something in me softened. We were somewhere entirely new, though it hadn’t been felt until just then.

We hadn’t planned anything. No itinerary, no must-sees. Just a spontaneous impulse followed through with. We had booked only two nights at our Airbnb, unsure if we would want to stay longer. Seven days later, we were still walking those same cobblestone streets.

That first breakfast stretched for three hours. A spread of dips and olives, cheeses I couldn’t name, three kinds of eggs. Flavors that challenged what breakfast was meant to be. I told my partner, without hesitation, that it was one of the best breakfasts of my life. But it wasn’t just the food. It was the presence. And no one else at the cafe was on their phone. It felt like a different world. The way time felt wide enough to hold wonder, without rush or measurement.

We spent the day wandering. Through shops filled with colour and texture and familiar things that felt unfamiliar in their setting. Through crowds that sounded like stories and smells that lingered. In Lisbon I had thought I had experienced cafe culture—until I saw Istanbul, where every second storefront offered some slowing of time, some invitation to pause.

At some point, we found ourselves at the Hagia Sophia. A vast, cavernous peace held within stone. The building is 1,500 years old. Originally a cathedral, now a mosque—and at one time, the largest cathedral in the world for over 1,000 years. It had been standing for longer than I could fathom. Time had written itself onto the walls. Cracks, stains, chipped mosaics. But none of it diminished the beauty. In fact, it added to it. The age didn’t distract. It brought reverence. A quiet respect for things that last not in spite of time, but because of it.

Later that evening, we booked a small boat tour—impulsively, like everything else that week. The guide spoke perfect English. Only a few of us were aboard. As the boat moved along the Bosphorus, the sun dipped behind the skyline, scattering pink and gold across the surface of the water. We listened to stories about the history of the city while watching it flicker between old and new. In that moment, I felt both suspended and grounded. Drifting, but fully present.

It was all unexpected. Not just the beauty of the city, but how safe, calm, and nourishing it felt.

On the way to the airport before the flight, I had called my parents. They had been to Turkey many years ago and offered warnings of safety out of habit. Be careful. It may not be safe. There might be discrimination. The words weren’t new. They echoed the vague anxieties that often accompany places we do not know. Too foreign, too unfamiliar, too uncertain. My own hesitation came not from experience but from the stories I’d heard, the coverage I’d seen, the way places get flattened into headlines and hearsay.

But the Istanbul I experienced bore no resemblance to the one I had imagined. In its place was something vivid, generous, and inviting. Nothing matched the map in my mind. And that was the gift.

It left me wondering: what else have I misunderstood? What places, or people, or possibilities have I quietly put to the side—not from knowing, but from fearing? What stories have I accepted without living, filled in with artificial color, faded by distance?

Last night I read something in a book about how we’re all like cameras. We arrive in the world with blank film. As we move through life, we capture images—moments, impressions, conversations—that shape what we believe about the world. Some of the pictures are clear and vibrant because they’re our own. Others are faint and washed out, taken not by us, but handed down: secondhand photographs of places we’ve never been, people we’ve never met, lives we’ve never lived.

The more I thought about it, the more I started to see this trip not as a vacation, but as a new photo—one I hadn’t taken yet. One that replaced the old picture I had been carrying, unbeknownst to me. And the remarkable thing was not that the real Istanbul was different from what I imagined. It was that I had finally given myself permission to look for myself.

Sometimes, it’s not about collecting more pictures, but about changing the ones we already have. Releasing the images built from warnings, letting go of inherited shadows, creating space for surprise. What we believe can have more to do with what we’ve been told than what we’ve seen. And the only way forward is to see for ourselves.

There’s something about a spontaneous trip that creates intimacy, not only with a place, but with our own perceptions. Without plans, we notice more. Without expectations, we feel more. And when we allow a place to reveal itself on its terms, rather than ours, we’re reminded of how much there is beyond the edges of what we think we know.

In many ways, the journey wasn’t just to Istanbul. It was out of a story I had quietly accepted. Out of assumption. Out of caution. And into wonder. There are fewer things more disorienting and more necessary than being wrong in the best way. It’s a reminder of how alive the world is when we let it be different than we expected.

Sometimes, all it takes is a call to prayer at dawn, a plate full of olives, and a boat at sunset to remember how little we know—and how beautiful that can be.

Istanbul felt like a beginning. And maybe it was.

And that is how I learned to Istanbul.

How to Progress

This past week, I received the results of a health test I took a few weeks ago. Nothing alarming or urgent, but something showed up—something that had also showed up a few years ago, that I had thought was behind me.

At first, I managed to keep calm. I feel good physically. The data says one thing, but my lived experience says another. So I focused more on what I was feeling than what I was reading.

For about one day. Then something shifted.

The calm gave way to unease. The unfinished business of this health marker began to loom larger than I had expected it to. Despite all the work, despite the improvements I’ve noticed in my energy, strength, clarity—despite the consistent effort—it was still there. And, with it, a quiet question: Why isn’t this fixed yet?

That question soon became a feeling I recognized. Frustration. Anxiety. A familiar tightness that used to arrive with report cards as a child. The feeling of scoring 98%, but being preoccupied with the missing 2%. Noticing what hadn’t been achieved, rather than what had.

It surprised me. Not because the feeling was new, but because I thought I might have outgrown it.

The expectation of perfection, it turns out, doesn’t retire peacefully. It lingers. Disguises itself. Sometimes it speaks quietly, in the background. Other times, like this week, it steps forward and takes the mic.

I’ve noticed this voice before. It shows up in places beyond health—in relationships, in work, in the expectations I didn’t realize I was holding. And what it often brings with it is tension. Not just in my body, but in the way life feels. Everything narrows. Options reduce. There’s a right way and a wrong way. A good outcome and a bad one. Progress becomes binary: pass or fail.

And that’s when my energy starts to drain. That’s when I hold back from trying new things, from taking risks, from allowing myself to be surprised. Because if perfection is the standard, then trying becomes a liability.

That’s also when the most joyful parts of my life—the lightness, the spontaneity, the play—begin to lose their colour.

I’ve been wondering why this happens. Why the default is so often toward judgment, even when I think I’ve moved beyond it. And I suspect part of it is the residue from years of being measured. Schools framed learning as achievement. Work rewarded outcomes. Health became something to be quantified, tracked, improved. In all those environments, the lesson is clear: better is good, but best is safest.

And so something in me continues to chase “best,” long after the reason for doing so has faded.

But this week invited a different kind of reflection. As I journaled yesterday morning, I saw, with quiet clarity, how far I’ve come—not in terms of results, but in depth of care. I noticed how conditioned I still am to measure progress by what’s unresolved, rather than what’s being tended to. And I felt, in that noticing, an invitation to see differently.

To see the daily choices—the early mornings at the gym, the quiet stretches, the red light therapy, the food prepared with intention—not as transactions toward perfection, but as demonstrations of self care and love. And when framed this way, something softens. I begin to feel more of the satisfaction I often bypass. I begin to see all the effort not as a means to an end, but as something worthy in itself.

This shift isn't unfamiliar—but it still feels new every time. Moving from judgment to curiosity. From closure to openness. From wanting control to accepting care.

It’s the difference between asking, “Did this work?” and wondering, “What is this teaching me?”

There’s something beautiful in that wondering. Something human. And less machine. It doesn’t arrive with answers, but with space. And in that space, growth happens—even when “results” do not.

This softening isn’t just inward. It echoes outward. The more I practice accepting the effort in myself, the more I begin to notice it in others. I find myself focusing less on how others measure up, and more on how they show up. Whether it's my partner, friends, colleagues—there’s a gentler gaze available. One that sees intention even when initiative falters. One that sees care even when outcomes vary.

It begins to form a kind of loop. Recognition of humanity feeds compassion, which in turn, allows more of that humanity to be seen. Less pressure. More space.

It’s not a final destination. I know the next time I receive a test result like this one, I may still feel the reaction. There may still be a moment of comparison, disappointment, desire for certainty. But maybe—hopefully—it will be softer. Less sharp. And maybe I’ll spend less time in that narrow space before remembering that my journey is not about perfection, but about progress. Not about being done, but about being here.

There’s a quiet kind of achievement in that.

The kind that doesn’t show up in test results.

The kind that takes root slowly—in the way I stretch in the morning, in the way I breathe before I react, in the way I remember to be kind when it feel I should not be.

And maybe the most perfect we can hope to be… is to keep going.

And that is how I am learning to progress.

How to Road Trip

We didn’t know where we were going.

What we did know was that we had set aside the time. That felt like enough. Not knowing the destination wasn’t a problem—it was, in a quiet way, the point.

A direct flight appeared in our search, from Lisbon to Vienna, Austria. That seemed as good a place to begin as any. A few hours later, we went to the airport.

After landing, we walked across the airport to the car rental counter, picked up the keys, started the engine, and drove.

Not knowing what lay ahead was, at first, disorienting. But as the kilometers passed, it slowly became calming. There was no list of places to see. No pressure to arrive. Just a road, and time, and us.

It was on the highway somewhere in Austria that we noticed it first. During a stretch of traffic, cars ahead of us began to move—not forward, but sideways. The ones in the left lane edged further to the left. Those on the right veered gently toward the shoulder. A corridor began to appear in the middle, empty but deliberate.

It happened again. And then again. Only on the third occasion a few days later did we begin to understand—this was no coincidence. It was a quiet agreement between drivers, built into muscle memory. A space formed intuitively, in anticipation of an emergency vehicle that hadn’t yet arrived. An unspoken collective act of care.

Which is perhaps what made it striking. We hadn’t read about it. It wasn’t in the guidebook. It only became visible by being there, and by paying attention.

That kept happening.

In Slovenia, we stayed at places that weren’t written about, where menus rarely included English and smiles carried most conversations. There were no gift shops or walking tours. But there was an intensity to the hospitality that caught us by surprise—people willing to help, not because they were told to, but because it felt natural.

Everything worked. Parking machines. Public washrooms. Even fountains. Nothing extravagant. Just quietly functional. And when something didn’t work—like the air conditioning in our room—the response we received revealed a different layer of the place.

“The system says it works,” the receptionist insisted. First once, then again. Offers to change rooms were made, and then reversed, based on the unwavering truth of the system's assertion.

When a technician came the following day, he explained the design of the system in exacting detail—how it was intended for perfect conditions, how something small must have failed, how that failure rendered the whole thing helpless. It made me smile.

Somewhere between the unyielding structure of Austria and the soft adaptability of Slovenia, I started to see just how much culture hides in the spaces between events. Not in the postcards or plates of food or museum exhibits, but in everyday assumptions. In what people notice. In what they don’t. In how they respond when a system breaks.

There’s a difference, I've come to learn, between visiting a place and being somewhere.

Travel often encourages the former—moving quickly, collecting sights, capturing proof. But this trip felt like the latter. We didn’t plan our route. We avoided highways. We stopped for any town that looked interesting, walked around until something pulled us in, and stayed longer than we thought we would. The best stops weren’t on any map.

Each day, I limited myself to one hour online, usually in the morning. No email. No stock market. No messages. No social media. But what changed wasn’t how I used my time, it was how my attention softened. Details I normally miss began to land. The color of trees. The tilt of a road sign. The way light falls differently through a mountain valley.

At a small gym, I used equipment I hadn’t seen before. Nothing complicated, just different. I found myself using machines in unfamiliar ways, pulled out of my usual routines. It struck me how habitual even my workouts at my home gym had become. Without realizing it, I was repeating the same motions, day after day. Something about being somewhere new disrupted the cycle. Forced me to pay attention again.

In cities I know well—Lisbon, New York—it can be hard to tell what belongs. What’s made for locals versus what’s made to appear local for someone like me. But in Slovenia, that question didn’t arise. Small towns seemed uninterested in performing for visitors. Things were not what they were designed to seem. They were just… what they were.

Without knowing if we’d continue driving or stay another day, we followed something that had less to do with logic and more to do with feeling. A kind of improvisation. It made things lighter. There was comfort in not knowing what was next.

There’s a spaciousness that comes with the unknown. It doesn’t always feel good. At first, it can feel like floating—but over time, it can begin to feel like freedom. What does it mean to move through a place with no aim, no target, no arrival point? What shows up when there’s nothing to chase?

Perhaps it wasn’t really a road trip at all—it was a permission slip. To pause. To notice. To lean into surprise. To be somewhere, without needing to prove that I had been.

Maybe this is what it means to road trip. Not to get from point A to point B. But to move with presence, to dwell in curiosity, and to allow the road to shape the direction, not just the destination.

I left with no plan. I returned with no souvenirs. But the world felt different. Somehow clearer—not because it had changed, but because I had started to look again.

And that is how I learned to road trip.

How to Bruno Mars

For as long as I can remember, silence has been my default. I’ve spent years seeking it—protecting it—in between conversations, around meetings, after long days. Silence offers space. And I’ve come to appreciate how much happens in that space.

But recently, something shifted. My partner loves music in the way I love quiet. Slowly, the soundtrack of my days changed. I still don’t pay attention to the names of most songs or artists, or even the lyrics. But I recognize what I enjoy. And over time, I began to enjoy Bruno Mars more than others.

Earlier this year, we went to Vegas to see Bruno Mars live. I’ve never been one to follow concerts closely. But something about this experience stayed with me.

The seats were surprisingly comfortable—though almost unnecessary, since we stood for nearly the entire show. The energy was infectious. Everyone was on their feet, moving, singing, letting go. I don’t remember the names of the songs. But I remember the feeling. Which, in the end, feels more important.

Before the show started, something unusual happened. As we entered the venue, they took our phones and locked them in small pouches. Pockets we carried with us, but couldn’t open for the next three or four hours. At first, it felt inconvenient. Disorienting. But then the initial discomfort softened into something else.

It’s one thing to be without a phone. It’s another to be without a phone in a room with tens of thousands of other people who are also without theirs. There was no glow from screens. No arms raised trying to film the stage. Just people. Bodies swaying, voices rising, everyone there.

I noticed something in myself—a flicker of an impulse. There were moments when I wanted to reach for my phone. Not to call anyone. Not even to share. Just to capture. I don’t post on social media, but even so, I quietly thought, “This would be a beautiful moment to record.”

That impulse said something. About how deep the habit runs. About how fast the urge can pull us out of a moment, even just a little, to step outside it and preserve it. And yet, the simple reality of not having the option made everything feel more complete. Nothing to do but enjoy what was unfolding.

After the opening track, he leaned into the mic and sang a song about the phones. About taking them away just for one night. About returning to the good old days, when we danced and laughed without having to hold anything in our hands. There was humor in it. A little teasing. But also something sharper—like we were being offered a glimpse into what we’ve forgotten.

And I thought about how rare this experience has become. Not just being present, but being present together. Most modern concerts are designed with sharing in mind. Other performers, like Taylor Swift, have made it part of their strategy. Phones in the air aren’t a distraction—they’re marketing. The show doesn’t end when the lights go down. It lives on through stories, reels, and FOMO. It’s good for business.

But this wasn't.

There’s something economically irrational for an artist to ask people not to share. And yet, maybe that's why it felt so special. Something about its inaccessibility made it more vivid. Unrepeatable. More real.

Later, at the gym, one of his songs came on again. And suddenly, I wasn’t on a rowing machine—I was back in that theatre. I could see the lights. The way he danced across the stage. The way we danced. Every detail came rushing back, not because I watched a video of it, but because I had lived it fully.

There’s something ironic about that. That not trying to remember might be the best way of remembering. When I’m fully present, not just without technology but without being pulled into thoughts elsewhere, the memory doesn’t fade. It stays. It sinks in deeper. It’s not a photo—I can’t scroll to it—but it’s mine.

What struck me most wasn’t just my own presence, though. It was the presence of everyone else. There’s something profoundly different when an experience is shared by a crowd all focused on the same thing. It felt a little like being in a meditation retreat—or a yoga retreat—where stillness and focus are collective, where silence isn’t lonely but full. But I’ve only ever felt that kind of shared presence in small groups. A dozen people. Maybe a room of fifty. Never in a crowd of thousands.

And now, days and weeks later, what stays with me is exactly what didn’t get captured. What couldn’t be replayed. What couldn’t be posted or liked or remembered externally. It lives quietly inside me. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Sometimes, the most vivid memories don’t come from the moments we hold onto. They come from the ones we fully live.

And that is how I learned to Bruno Mars.

How to Pizzeria

I was sitting at home with no particular plans, my phone buzzing with the usual noise of group chats.

One message caught my eye—photos of cousins from India traveling through Europe. They thought I was still in Australia. I picked up the phone, called them immediately, and said, “I’m coming.” A few days later, I was in Naples, Italy.

They had been to a pizzeria the night before I arrived. “We have to go back,” they said. I didn’t ask questions. We waited in line for over an hour. Apparently, this was one of the original pizza places in Naples. It had no menu. Four types of pizza. That was all.

When we finally walked in, the energy in the room caught me by surprise.

Laughter floated through the air, not from the tables, but from behind the counter. A young woman tossing dough grinned, radiant and generous. A waiter tapped me on the shoulder, laughing, saying something in Italian I couldn’t understand, even with my vague memory of Portuguese. Then an older man shouted something back across the kitchen, and they both burst into laughter.

Something in me paused.

It wasn’t the pizza—though it was, without doubt, the best I’ve tasted. It wasn’t even the company, though being with family again, in a different part of the world, brought a quiet comfort. It was something else.

The waiter—the one who was taking my order, in the middle of what must have been an exhausting shift—was happier than I was. Less tired. More alive. He wasn’t on vacation. He wasn’t traveling. He didn’t have the luxury of leisure time or the novelty of being in a new country. But he was lit up. At ease. Several shades more joyful than me.

And it was contagious. Laughter reached our table in waves. Smiles began to stretch across our faces as we looked around and saw not just good food being served, but good energy being shared, without effort, without reason.

The next morning, while meditating, I could still feel it. That joy hadn’t passed through me—it had stayed. A presence. A warmth. I started asking myself why. What gives that kind of feeling its staying power?

It wasn’t money. It wasn’t time. I have both, and they weren’t what stood out.

I kept returning to the energy of the people working at the pizzeria. There was a kind of satisfaction I sensed in them, the kind that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but can be felt unmistakably. They were really good at what they did. Not just making pizza, but being present, being together, holding a rhythm that made the whole restaurant hum. And they knew it. Not in a prideful way—but in an embodied way. Like a musician who doesn’t need to overplay, or a dancer who doesn’t need to perform. Just in it. For the love of the craft.

I’ve felt that kind of satisfaction before. Moments from the past drifted in—launching a product at a company I once ran, where everything felt aligned; making guacamole one night for friends, having made it hundreds of times before, each step familiar, the balance of lime and heat just right; the end of a long meditation retreat, where the mind is quiet, the body settled, and presence feels deep and effortless.

There’s a particular kind of joy that comes from doing something well. Not perfectly, but wholeheartedly. It’s less about the outcome and more about the grounding that comes with mastery—not a title or a credential, but a knowing in the bones.

That night at the pizzeria was also a reminder of something else. The joy of doing things with others. The staff weren’t just in the same room—they were in rhythm with one another. Laughing across the floor, playing their parts without stepping on each other’s toes. It felt like jazz. Spontaneous but structured. Loose but connected.

In contrast, I spend a lot of my time—with work, with content, with tools—talking to screens. Often alone. It’s easy to forget the lightness of shared space, the subtle joy of small collaboration. Team doesn’t have to mean a big organization. Sometimes it looks like making dinner together, or walking in silence with a friend, or even trading glances with a stranger on the subway—those in-between moments of unspoken human rhythm.

And there was the simplicity of the whole thing. No menu. Four pizzas. A small room with old paint and mismatched tables. Nothing curated for social media. Nothing performed. Just what it was.

I’ve come to appreciate how little it takes to create meaning. A simple ritual, repeated often, held with care. Morning tea. Evening walks. A few deep breaths before bed. When done with attention, these small gestures become more than routine—they become grounding. Like a sacred rhythm without the need for ceremony.

That pizzeria, in all its simplicity, has reframed something for me. For a long time I chased the idea that joy lay just around the bend. More time. More freedom. More clarity. It’s easy to imagine it lives elsewhere—on quiet beaches, in future plans, in someone else’s life. But it rarely arrives in the places the mind expects it to.

That night in Naples reminded me it can be right here. In work done with love. In laughter shared without reason. In something familiar done with care.

Since then, whenever I see a pizza—even a basic slice from the airport food court—I hope to smile. Not because of what it is, but because of what it represents to me. A small, grounded joy. A warmth that doesn’t demand anything. A reminder.

I take that memory as an invitation—to keep finding joy in the ordinary, and to let it spread.

And that is how I learned to pizzeria.

How to Escape Room

The door clicked shut behind us. There was no turning back—not for another hour. The room was quiet, dimly lit, eerily detailed.

That first minute held a kind of stillness I don’t often feel. For the next sixty minutes, I knew where I needed to be. And that, in itself, was rare.

I’ve done dozens of escape rooms over the last ten years. Some more elaborate than others. Some with strangers, some with close friends. But every time, something shifts. For a brief moment, life becomes simpler. The world narrows. There’s a puzzle in front of me. A team around me. A clock above me. And nothing else.

What does it mean to escape? I’ve been thinking about that.

At first glance, stepping into an escape room seems like the very definition of escapism. But the more I sit with it, the more it feels like something else. Something closer to stepping in than stepping out. It’s not an avoidance of life. It’s a clearer version of it. One that moves a little slower, feels a little sharper.

There’s something powerful about choosing to close a door. About leaving the phone outside, the notifications behind. Meetings, errands, messages—all waiting on the other side of the wall. I didn’t need to check anything or be anywhere. I was exactly where I had chosen to be. Locked in, yes. But also free.

It reminded me of that quiet clarity that comes at the start of a meditation retreat. Or the strange calm that settles in during a long-haul flight, thousands of feet above everything that usually feels urgent. Sometimes, escape is a doorway to presence. The more I consciously step out of regular life, the more available I feel to see it again with new eyes.

And then there’s the simplicity. The rules are clear. The boundaries are evident. The goal is singular: get out. So little of modern life is like that. Most days blur with open tabs and half-tasks. Too many choices. In contrast, being in a space with limits—literal walls—creates a kind of permission to focus, to engage fully with what’s in front of me. In paradoxical ways, constraint becomes expansive.

Over the weekend, I found myself caring deeply about a combination lock that guarded a fake treasure chest. I watched the clock count down and recalibrated our efforts with every passing minute. I was probably more competitive than anyone else in the room, reminding people of how much time we had left. It wasn’t about the prize. It was something else entirely: the joy of taking play seriously.

As an adult, spaces to truly play seem to shrink over time. The ones where the stakes are low, but the effort is real. Where silliness and structure coexist. Where there’s space to try, to fumble, to laugh. It feels rare. And regenerative.

What’s even rarer is the chance to collaborate without a formal agenda. Some of the people in the room were close friends I know from professional settings. But in this space, those dynamics disappeared. We weren’t leading anything or managing anyone. We were searching under rugs and tapping on walls, guessing wildly and getting things wrong. It was vulnerable in a way I hadn’t expected. Revealing and familiar at the same time.

There’s an intimacy in being confused together. In pausing to think out loud. In noticing who rushes ahead, who slows down, who steps back. The escape room became a mirror—reflecting small truths about how we each navigate uncertainty. But it also became a container. A reminder that even without knowing, we could move forward.

What surprised me most was how fully I cared about the outcome. Not passively, not as an observer. But as someone in the story. I realize how few experiences offer that now. So much of daily life is performed at a safe distance—watching, scrolling, spectating. Entertainment often leaves nothing required of us. But this asked something.

I found myself admiring the room itself. The clues hidden in plain sight. The props and puzzles and hidden compartments. Someone had imagined all of this. Carefully. Creatively. Not just the story, but how the story would feel. It reminded me of the first time I held a well-designed object and thought about the person who designed it.

And maybe that’s what stayed with me most. Not the puzzles or the locks, but the feeling of stepping into someone else’s imagination. Not observing it, but being enveloped by it. Participating in it. There’s something sacred in that.

Eventually, the door opened, and the hour slipped away. We stepped back into streetlights and mild weather and the weekend’s to-do list. But something lingered.

I don't think of the escape room as an escape from life. I think of it as a small reminder of what life can hold—when attention sharpens, when presence softens, when imagination leads. These qualities aren’t locked behind puzzles. They’re here, scattered quietly across the everyday.

Sometimes the challenge isn’t to find a way out. But to find a way in.

To notice when I’m paying attention. To feel when I’m playing, truly playing. To trust that collaboration can be aimless and meaningful. To remember that uncertainty isn’t always something to fix, but something to feel. And to celebrate the moments, however short, when I step into someone else’s dream—and, for a while, lose track of where mine ends and theirs begins.

The door behind me closed once again, this time without a click.

Not a lock, not a puzzle.

Just a breath.

And that is how I learned to escape room.