Today I went thrift shopping. Anyone who thrifts knows the small, private ritual of it: racks too full, mirrors too honest, time moving differently. As I tried on different outfits, something familiar struck me — not for the first time, but with unusual clarity. How important it is to know what you like. And, equally, how important it is to know what does not work for you. There are colours I reach for instinctively, silhouettes I trust. There are fabrics I already know will irritate me, cuts that have betrayed me before. Knowing these things saves time. It spares frustration. It narrows the field in a place designed to overwhelm. And yet. Every so often, something unexpected catches my eye. Something I would never normally pick. Different colour. Different shape. Slightly uncomfortable, conceptually. I try it on anyway — not because I expect it to work, but because curiosity feels safer than certainty in that moment. Sometimes it’s awful. Sometimes it’s quietly perfect. That sm...
We are obsessed with imagining what we would do if we were told we had only months to live. The bucket lists, the tearful confessions, the reckless adventures, the sudden confessions of love — they are everywhere in books, movies, and online articles. The message is clear: if death were imminent, our lives would transform in an instant. And yet, I have started to wonder: would they? I suspect that, for most people, life would continue much as it always has. Morning would come. Coffee would be poured. We would get dressed, commute, answer emails, check phones, scroll feeds, and repeat the familiar rituals of our days. Work would still demand attention. Laundry would still pile up. Small obligations would quietly persist, demanding their share of our attention. Even when faced with mortality, human life — mundane, ordinary, patterned — is astonishingly resilient. We have been told, so insistently, that our lives are miserable, boring, incomplete, that we are going about living “all wr...