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I met my eight-year-old self today, and she asked me, “Why do you talk to yourself like that?” “Like what?” “Like you don't like yourself very much.” It struck me how easily we forgive others for being human. We make room for their mistakes, their bad days, their moments of weakness. We remind them that nobody gets everything right, that they are allowed to be tired, that one bad decision doesn't make them a bad person. Yet somehow, when it comes to ourselves, the rules change. We turn our mistakes into evidence against our character. We call ourselves foolish for not knowing better, weak for struggling, and lazy for needing rest. We hold on to old embarrassments and past mistakes long after we'd have forgiven someone else for theirs. We become both the person on trial and the one who refuses to grant a pardon. My eight-year-old self was still waiting for an answer. I wondered what I would say if she were the one making all those mistakes. Would I call her stupid? Would I tell her she should have known better? Would I make her feel she had to become someone else before she deserved a little kindness? Of course not. Perhaps being kinder to ourselves begins with learning to offer ourselves the same understanding we give so freely to others. After all, we're the ones who have to live with ourselves through it all. M. | October 2026

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I wonder if guideposts ever get lonely, standing at the edge of the same roads, day after day, watching everyone pass them by. Perhaps they don't. Perhaps all they need is to know that somewhere, someone is finding their way because they are there. I think about this sometimes, about how we can spend so much of our lives trying to find our way through the world, never knowing that one day, someone might come along and make the journey feel a little less lonely. And perhaps that is what we have become for each other. Not the destination, not the answer to every question, but a little light along the way. I will keep a little warmth for the days the world grows cold around you. And when the noise inside me gets too loud, I know where to find my stillness. Funny, isn't it? How two people can be so far apart and still become part of how the other finds their way home. M. | 20 October 2026 p/s: Happy birthday, dear muse. I hope this next trip around the sun is kind to you.

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When I was little, I thought being an adult meant you'd eventually understand everything. That one day, you'd wake up knowing what to do with your life. I thought grown-ups had answers. That they knew where they were going, who they were supposed to be, and how to stop being afraid of things they couldn't control. Nobody told me that the years would pass without necessarily bringing the answers with them. That you could make a decision with all the love in your heart and still spend years wondering if you got it wrong. I thought that by now, I'd know how to make peace with the past. Instead, I've learned that some questions grow older with you. Maybe that's all adulthood is. Realising that the people you once thought had everything figured out were probably just doing their best, too. Making choices with what little they knew, carrying things they never spoke about, hoping tomorrow would make a little more sense than today. Every now and then, I wish I could sit beside the little girl I used to be and tell her that I tried. I'd tell her that I still don't have all the answers. And I think she'd be a little disappointed. Because she thought that by the time we grew up, we'd know. Still, if I could tell her one more thing, I'd tell her that it's alright. We're getting a little better at finding our way through. M. | October 2026

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Perhaps we need to find our way back to a time when the world was something we marvelled at, rather than something we had to learn to survive. I think about the children we once were, chasing clouds and butterflies, making friends over a shared toy, and coming home with muddy feet, dirty knees, and hearts full of happiness. We didn't know much about the world back then, but perhaps we knew something we've since forgotten. How to be kind without being asked. How to find joy in the simplest things. How to love the world without needing a reason to. Sometimes, I wonder what happened to us. We grew old enough to build things, conquer things, and destroy things, but somehow forgot how to take care of the things that were never ours to ruin. I think about the children in today's world, how they should still be making up games, laughing over little things, and collecting little reasons to be happy, and how far too many are already learning that the world can hurt. I wonder if growing up has something to do with it. How we learn to guard our hearts, build our walls, and carry our disappointments until we forget that the world can still be met with tenderness. I don't know how we begin to heal a world like this. Maybe we should begin with ourselves, with the kindness we choose, the suffering we refuse to dismiss, and the little ways we make life gentler for one another. And to remember that we are not powerless simply because we cannot change everything. We cannot undo all the hurt we've caused, but we can choose not to pass it on. Because what if healing the world means remembering how to love it before we learned all the ways to hurt it? M. | October 2026

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Why now? Why not when we were younger, happier, less corrupted by this world? Why do some people find each other only after life has left them with wounds they are still learning to live with, after they've learnt to be careful with the very thing they still long to give? I don't have the answer. Maybe we just need time to grow a little, hurt a little, and learn a little more before we can love each other right. And perhaps that's the strange thing about timing. We spend so much of our lives wondering why certain things didn't happen sooner, never knowing who we might have been if they had. Of all the people in the world, of all the different turns two lives could take, somehow, some paths cross. Two strangers become familiar. Two separate worlds find a little room for each other. I wonder how many versions of ourselves have existed just to arrive at the people we are when we meet. Maybe there's no equation that could explain why certain people find each other. Maybe we're just living, missing turns, taking chances, and finding each other in a world full of ways not to. But still, what are the odds? And how extraordinary that, somehow, we happen. M. | October 2026

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I sometimes wonder how many times we have walked past someone who would have changed our lives if we'd met on a different day. How many ‘almosts’ have passed us on the street, carrying their own little universes, never knowing how close they came to becoming part of ours, or how close we came to becoming part of theirs. And how happiness might have always been less of a destination than catching yourself humming while doing the dishes, or finding the afternoon sun falling across the floor just right. I don't know why I thought of any of these things. Maybe a mind is just a house with too many windows, and every now and then, the wind opens them all at once. Anyway, I should probably drink more water. P/S. I've been a little under the weather lately, which might explain why my thoughts have been taking unsupervised field trips. M. | October 2026

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I don't think I was prepared for how much it would mean to me to see the person who has spent so much of his life being strong become a little boy around me. And I don't think I will ever stop being moved by that. To know that someone can carry so much of the world on his shoulders and still find his way back to the child he once was, simply because he feels safe enough to. I used to think love meant finding someone to grow old with. Now, I think it also means finding someone who reminds you that growing up doesn't have to mean leaving the child inside you behind. And perhaps the most beautiful part is knowing that we get to be those people for each other. M. | October 2026

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