When success stopped meaning working all the time

When I was younger, I had a straightforward definition of success: a better title, a higher salary, and a career that was always moving upward. I believed hard work was the path to all of it. And by hard work, I did not simply mean doing my job well. I meant being constantly available, taking on more responsibilities, working long days, and sometimes continuing late into the night. I thought that if people saw how dependable and hardworking I was, success would eventually follow. For a long time, I wore exhaustion almost like proof that I was doing something right.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to grow professionally. Titles, compensation, recognition, and advancement matter. They can provide financial security, open new opportunities, and affirm the value of our work. But over time, I began to realize that I had allowed these external measures to become almost the entire definition of success. I was building a career, but I was not always leaving enough room for a life outside it.

I have now been working for 13 years (even more when you count those early years tutoring and having side hustles to make sure I was able to help the family in my own little ways). During my tenure in my most recent workplace, I have taken more genuine personal time off—time without work calls, messages, or lingering distractions—than I probably did in the previous 10 years combined. That realization was both surprising and uncomfortable because it made me think about how much personal time I had previously surrendered. I believed that being committed meant always being accessible. Even when I was technically away from work, part of my attention remained there. Rest did not feel complete because work was always waiting at the edge of it.

My more recent experience has shown me something different: I can care deeply about my work without allowing it to consume every part of my life. I can be dependable without being permanently available. I can continue pursuing growth while protecting the time I need for rest, relationships, and myself. This has not made me less ambitious; it has made my ambition more sustainable.

At different points in my career, I also had opportunities to manage people. I led both small and large teams, working with colleagues locally and internationally. Those experiences were rewarding, and I learned a great deal from helping people grow, bringing different personalities together, and taking responsibility for the direction and performance of a team. Leadership gave me a sense of purpose, but it also demanded more of me than I sometimes had left to give.

Managing people is not simply about assigning tasks and checking whether the work gets done. It means making decisions, resolving conflicts, responding to concerns, giving feedback, motivating people, and carrying responsibility for outcomes that depend on more than your own performance. When you lead a team, other people understandably look to you for clarity, reassurance, and direction. But there were moments when I felt so mentally exhausted that I could no longer make proper sense of things, much less provide the thoughtful guidance my team deserved.

There comes a point when the brain is simply too tired to continue producing good decisions. You may still attend the meetings, answer the messages, and complete what is expected of you, but you know that you are no longer giving your best. You are operating on whatever energy remains. It becomes difficult to be fully present for your team when you have already exhausted your capacity to think, listen, and respond with care.

That experience eventually led me to make a decision that may not fit the conventional idea of career progression: I chose to become an individual contributor. To some people, moving from managing teams to focusing on one’s own work might look like a step backward or even a demotion. Careers are often imagined as ladders, with each promotion taking us farther away from the work itself and closer to managing the people who do it. Under that model, returning to an individual contributor role can appear as though someone has stopped advancing.

I do not see it that way. Becoming an individual contributor allowed me to work more closely on projects I genuinely enjoyed. Instead of measuring my progress by the number of people reporting to me, I could focus on the quality of what I created, the problems I helped solve, and the value I brought through my own expertise. I had more space to develop my craft and contribute in ways that felt both meaningful and natural to me.

The change also gave me more time and energy for myself and for the things I love outside work. I could finish the day without feeling that I was still carrying the concerns of an entire team. I could be present in my personal life without constantly shifting between professional decisions and other people’s needs. I did not become less responsible or less committed. I simply became more deliberate about where I wanted to place my energy.

This experience helped me recognize that leadership is not limited to having direct reports. An individual contributor can lead through ideas, expertise, collaboration, initiative, and influence. You can guide important projects, solve complex problems, support colleagues, and help shape decisions without formally managing a team. Leadership can be demonstrated through the value you create, not only through the number of people you supervise.

Choosing to become an individual contributor also taught me that career growth does not always have to be vertical. Growth can mean becoming better at your craft, accepting more complex projects, expanding your influence, or finding work that is better aligned with your strengths. Sometimes growth means gaining a bigger title. At other times, it means gaining greater clarity about what you want your work to contribute to your life.

My definition of success has therefore expanded. It still includes meaningful work, professional development, fair compensation, and opportunities to lead, but it now also includes having time that genuinely belongs to me. It means being present with the people I love without repeatedly checking my phone. It means taking leave without feeling that I must remain half at work. It means having enough energy left at the end of the day to live—not merely enough to recover before working again tomorrow.

Perhaps this is one of the changes that comes with experience. Early in our careers, many of us are focused on proving ourselves. We want to show that we are capable, reliable, and willing to go the extra mile. There may be times when that extra effort helps us learn, build relationships, and create opportunities. But when the extra mile becomes the normal distance expected of us, we eventually have to ask what that way of working is costing.

The cost is not always immediately visible. It can appear gradually in the personal plans we keep postponing, the relationships that receive only what remains of our attention, or the rest that never fully restores us because part of our mind is still at work. We may continue meeting deadlines and performing well while becoming increasingly disconnected from the other parts of our lives. Because professional achievements are visible while personal sacrifices often remain private, it can take years before we recognize the imbalance.

There is also a difference between working hard because we have chosen to pursue something meaningful and working constantly because we are afraid of what might happen if we stop. One is driven by purpose; the other can be driven by pressure, insecurity, or the belief that our value depends on how useful we are to others. Both may look like dedication from the outside, but they do not feel the same—and they do not have the same effect on our well-being.

This is why work–life balance should not be understood as a rejection of hard work or ambition. It is not about avoiding difficult assignments, refusing responsibility, or insisting that every day be divided equally between work and personal life. Some periods will naturally require more time and effort than others. Balance means those demanding periods do not become a permanent condition. It means being able to meet professional responsibilities without allowing work to dominate every part of life indefinitely.

Organizations also have a role in shaping whether this balance is possible. Work–life balance cannot depend entirely on an employee’s ability to set boundaries. Workplace culture, leadership behavior, staffing, workload, and expectations around availability all influence whether people can genuinely disconnect. An organization may offer leave and flexible arrangements on paper, but employees will hesitate to use them if rest is quietly treated as a lack of commitment or if taking time off only means returning to an unmanageable amount of work.

Supporting work–life balance requires investment. It may involve adequate staffing, flexible policies, manageable workloads, supportive managers, and a culture that respects time away from work. However, that investment can be offset by stronger engagement, healthier employees, improved retention, and lower turnover costs. People are more likely to stay where they feel valued as human beings and where they can imagine not only building a career but also sustaining a life.

Today, I no longer see success as a destination reached by working the longest hours, managing the largest team, or making the greatest personal sacrifice. I see it as the ability to grow without continually losing something important along the way. Success is still doing work that matters and being recognized for what I contribute, but it is also being able to step away from that work and remain a whole person.

After 13 years, I still want to move forward. I still want to learn, take on meaningful challenges, lead in ways that reflect my strengths, and pursue opportunities that allow me to make a difference. I am simply more mindful now of what I want to bring with me—and what I am no longer willing to leave behind. Perhaps that is the definition of success I was missing when I was younger: not merely climbing higher, but building a career that leaves enough room for me to live.

Before we turn life into a story

My first report in graduate school was about phenomenology. Like most students encountering a new philosophical tradition, I initially approached it as an academic requirement. I read the assigned materials, tried to understand the unfamiliar concepts, and organized what I had learned into something I could explain to the class. At the time, my main concern was whether I understood the subject well enough to present it clearly. I did not expect the topic to remain with me after the report was over.

Phenomenology, in its simplest sense, is concerned with lived experience. It asks us to examine how we encounter the world before we impose our assumptions, explanations, and judgments upon it. Rather than immediately asking why something happened or what it means, phenomenology encourages us to begin with the experience itself. What did we see? What did we feel? How did the moment appear to us as we were living through it?

The more I thought about this, the more I realized how difficult it is to observe life without immediately interpreting it. We are constantly assigning meaning to our experiences. We decide whether a day was productive, whether a conversation went well, whether a decision was correct, or whether a difficult period made us stronger. We compare the present with the past and try to determine where it might lead us. Sometimes, we begin constructing the story of an experience before the experience has even ended.

Perhaps I notice this tendency because I work in communication. For much of my professional life, I have been asked to take events, decisions, and ideas and turn them into clear messages. I have written for organizations and leaders, each with a particular audience, purpose, and voice. This work has trained me to identify the important details, find an appropriate angle, and explain what something means to the people who need to understand it.

There is value in that process. Stories help people make sense of complicated events, and good communication can create understanding where there was previously confusion. However, working as a communicator can also make it difficult to experience something without considering how it might eventually be presented. An event becomes a possible article. A conversation offers a potential quotation. A difficulty becomes a lesson, while an achievement becomes a milestone. Even while something is happening, part of the mind is already organizing it into a narrative.

This is where phenomenology has become meaningful to me beyond the classroom. It reminds me that there is a difference between observing an experience and immediately turning it into a story. Before we decide what a moment represents, we should first allow ourselves to encounter it. This requires us to suspend, even temporarily, the instinct to explain everything according to what we already believe.

In phenomenology, this suspension is sometimes described as “bracketing.” The idea is not that we can completely remove our beliefs or personal histories from the way we see the world. Rather, we make a conscious effort to recognize those assumptions and prevent them from determining everything we notice. In everyday life, bracketing may be as simple as listening to someone without preparing a response, revisiting a familiar place with greater attention, or allowing an emotion to exist before deciding whether it is reasonable.

This way of observing can also change how we encounter other people. We often understand individuals according to the roles they occupy in our lives. We see someone as a colleague, supervisor, friend, family member, public official, or stranger. These categories are useful, but they can also make us believe that we already know who a person is. Once we become comfortable with our interpretation of someone, we may stop paying attention to the details that complicate it.

The same problem applies to how we understand ourselves. Over time, we develop stories about the kind of person we are. We describe ourselves as ambitious, reserved, successful, uncertain, independent, or responsible. These descriptions may contain some truth, but they can also become limiting. When an experience does not fit the identity we have constructed, we may dismiss it or force it into an older narrative rather than consider what it might reveal about us now.

Observing life as it happens, then, is not merely about noticing more details. It is about becoming more open to what an experience might show us. It means accepting that we do not always know immediately what a moment means. Some experiences need time before they can be understood, and others may never offer the clear lesson or resolution we expect from them.

This can be uncomfortable because we live in a culture that encourages immediate interpretation. We are expected to have an opinion about every development and a response to every question. Social media has made it possible to document an experience and publish our reflections on it almost simultaneously. The distance between living and narrating has become increasingly small.

There is nothing inherently wrong with documenting our lives or sharing what we have learned. I continue to believe in the power of storytelling. However, I am also beginning to understand that a story becomes richer when it comes from careful attention rather than immediate reaction. If we move too quickly to the lesson, we may overlook the contradictions and uncertainties that made the experience human.

Many of the moments that shape us do not announce their importance while they are happening. They may appear ordinary at first: a conversation we did not expect to remember, a quiet gesture from someone, a familiar routine that later disappears, or an unremarkable day that acquires meaning only in retrospect. If we are always searching for the obvious story, we may fail to notice the experiences that do not immediately present themselves as significant.

My report on phenomenology began as an academic exercise, but its central question has followed me into my life as a communicator and writer. It has made me think more carefully about the relationship between experience and storytelling. Writing requires us to interpret life, but good writing also requires us to observe it closely. We cannot describe honestly what we have never allowed ourselves to experience fully.

Perhaps this is what it means to pay attention: to resist the urge to make every moment immediately meaningful, productive, or shareable. It is to give life enough room to unfold before deciding what it has come to teach us.

There will always be time to find the angle, choose the words, and shape the narrative. Before we turn life into a story, however, we should first allow ourselves to live it.

When the joy in my work found its way back

The first half of this year felt like a turning point, although I did not recognize it immediately. There was no single defining moment when everything suddenly became better. There was no dramatic realization, no carefully written plan, and no particular morning when I woke up feeling like a completely different person. The change happened gradually, almost quietly. I simply began to notice that I was approaching work with more enthusiasm. I was becoming excited about ideas again. I was looking forward to projects instead of immediately feeling weighed down by everything they would require. Somewhere along the way, work began to feel less like something I had to get through and more like something I genuinely wanted to do.

That realization became even more meaningful when I compared it with how I felt last year.

Last year, my mental health was constantly up and down. Some days were manageable, while others felt much heavier. There were moments when I was motivated, productive, and hopeful, but that energy could disappear just as quickly. The instability affected more than my mood. It influenced the way I saw myself, the way I interpreted situations, and the way I approached my responsibilities. Work that would normally feel manageable could suddenly seem overwhelming. A minor setback could feel like evidence that I was not doing enough, while an ordinary challenge could make me question whether I was capable at all.

When you are struggling internally, it becomes difficult to keep that struggle contained in one part of your life. 

It follows you into your routines, your relationships, your decisions, and your work. Even if you continue showing up and completing what needs to be done, there can still be a quiet heaviness beneath it all. From the outside, you may appear productive. You may attend meetings, meet deadlines, respond to messages, and carry out your responsibilities. But internally, you may be working twice as hard just to remain present.

There were times last year when work felt like a reflection of whatever I was going through emotionally. On better days, I could see opportunities and possibilities. On difficult days, I saw pressure, uncertainty, and reasons to doubt myself. The work itself may not have changed, but the lens through which I viewed it certainly did. That is one of the difficult things about mental health: it can change the meaning of experiences that once felt familiar. It can make you question your abilities, even when your skills have not disappeared. It can convince you that you are falling behind, even when you are still moving forward.

Perhaps that is why the first half of this year has felt so different.

I began noticing a new kind of energy in myself. There was a sudden burst of enthusiasm, excitement, and joy in the things I was doing. I found myself becoming deeply invested in projects—not only because they were part of my job, but because I genuinely wanted to see them succeed. Ideas began to excite me again. Challenges made me curious instead of immediately anxious. Even the pressure that came with bigger responsibilities felt different. It was still pressure, but it was accompanied by purpose.

I found particular happiness in doing big things.

Large projects can be demanding. They require patience, coordination, decision-making, and the willingness to remain committed even when the way forward is not always clear. They can occupy your thoughts long after the workday ends. They can test your confidence and expose the areas where you still have much to learn. Yet, strangely, these were also the things that made me feel most alive. The more meaningful and ambitious the project was, the more engaged I became.

Maybe it was because bigger projects gave me something clear to move toward. They allowed me to use different parts of myself—the part that enjoys solving problems, the part that wants to create, the part that finds satisfaction in bringing people and ideas together, and the part that still believes good work can make a real difference. These projects demanded a lot from me, but they also gave something back. They gave me momentum. They gave me a reason to stretch beyond what was comfortable. They reminded me that I was capable of carrying responsibility and turning ideas into something tangible.

More than anything, they made me feel valued.

Feeling valued is not always about receiving praise or being publicly recognized. Sometimes, it is found in the simple act of being trusted with something important. It is in being asked for your perspective because people believe it matters. It is in knowing that your contribution affects the direction and outcome of a project. It is in realizing that your presence is not incidental—that there is something you bring to the table that is distinctly yours.

That sense of trust changed the way I saw my work, but it also began to change the way I saw myself. Instead of focusing only on what I lacked or what I could have done better, I began to notice what I was already capable of doing. I saw the experience I had accumulated, the instincts I had developed, and the strengths that had perhaps become invisible to me because I was too accustomed to carrying them. 

I started to recognize that growth does not always announce itself. Sometimes, you only see it when you are placed in a situation that requires you to become the person you have quietly been becoming all along.

I am still not completely sure what motivated this turnaround. Perhaps it was the nature of the projects themselves. Perhaps I was finally given the kind of work that matched my need for creativity, challenge, and purpose. Perhaps something within me had begun to heal, allowing me to experience enthusiasm that had been buried beneath exhaustion and self-doubt. It may have been a combination of many things: better circumstances, greater trust, meaningful opportunities, the right people, and the gradual return of my own confidence.

Maybe motivation is not always something we can explain neatly. We often talk about it as though it must come from a single goal or a clearly defined source. We assume that motivated people wake up knowing exactly what drives them. But my experience has been much less straightforward. Sometimes, motivation appears only after we begin. It grows when we become immersed in something that matters to us. It strengthens when our work challenges us without making us feel invisible. It becomes joy when we realize that what we are doing connects with a part of ourselves that has been waiting to feel useful again.

At the same time, I do not want to reduce this experience to the idea that staying busy is the answer to struggling. Busyness can sometimes distract us from what we need to confront, and productivity is not a substitute for healing. I learned this the hard way. Our value should never depend entirely on how much we accomplish or how much responsibility we can carry. There will be slower seasons, difficult days, and moments when rest is more necessary than achievement. I am learning that these realities can coexist: 

Work can give us purpose, while rest reminds us that we are worthy even when we are not producing anything.

What made this season different was not simply that I had more things to do. It was that the things I was doing felt meaningful. There is an important difference between being occupied and being engaged. Being occupied fills your time. Being engaged gives that time a sense of direction. The projects I worked on did not merely keep me busy; they invited me to care. They allowed me to contribute, imagine, lead, learn, and build. They made me feel connected to something beyond the completion of another task.

In that sense, work became one of the places where I found parts of myself again.

I found the version of me who gets excited by possibilities. I found the person who enjoys taking on challenges and thinking about how things could be done better. I found the confidence to make decisions, offer ideas, and trust my own judgment. I found joy not because everything was easy, but because I could once again see meaning in the effort. After a year of emotional uncertainty, that return felt significant.

Of course, the first half of this year was not perfect. A turnaround does not mean that every difficult feeling disappears. There were still stressful moments, tiring weeks, and situations that tested my patience. I still had moments of doubt. The difference was that those moments no longer seemed to define the entire experience. They became part of the work rather than proof that I was failing at it. I could feel tired without believing I had lost my passion. I could encounter a setback without assuming that everything was falling apart.

Perhaps that is one of the clearest signs that something had changed: I became more capable of holding both difficulty and joy at the same time.

I could acknowledge that a project was exhausting while still feeling grateful to be part of it. I could recognize the pressure of responsibility while also appreciating the trust behind it. I could admit that I did not have every answer without immediately questioning whether I belonged in the room. The challenges remained, but my relationship with them became healthier. They stopped feeling like judgments of my worth and started becoming opportunities to grow.

Looking back, I feel deeply grateful for this season. I am grateful for the projects that demanded more from me and, in doing so, showed me that I had more to give. I am grateful for the people who trusted me, included me, and allowed my ideas to take up space. I am grateful for the moments when work felt exciting again—not because I had forgotten how difficult the previous year had been, but because I understood exactly how meaningful it was to feel that excitement return.

I also feel grateful to myself for continuing to show up, even during the periods when I could not see where things were heading. 

We often celebrate the version of ourselves that succeeds, creates, leads, and accomplishes something visible. We do not always give enough credit to the version that simply survives uncertainty. But perhaps the joy I experienced this year was made possible by the person I was last year: the person who kept going even when motivation was inconsistent, confidence was fragile, and the future felt unclear.

There is something comforting about realizing that a difficult season does not get the final word. It may change us, slow us down, or make us question things we once knew about ourselves, but it does not mean that enthusiasm is gone forever. Joy can return in unexpected forms. Sometimes, it returns through rest. Sometimes, it returns through people. And sometimes, it returns through a large, complicated project that reminds you how much you still care.

As I move into the second half of the year, I want to carry this realization with me. I want to continue choosing work that allows me to grow without losing myself in the process. I want to remain ambitious while also respecting my limits. I want to celebrate the excitement I feel without turning it into another expectation I must constantly meet. 

Most of all, I want to remember that my value is not created by the work I do, even if meaningful work sometimes helps me recognize that value more clearly.

I still cannot name the exact reason things turned around. Maybe I will understand it better with time, or maybe it will always remain a combination of circumstances, opportunities, healing, and choice. What I know is that something shifted. The weight became lighter. My confidence began to return. Work became a source of energy instead of only an obligation.

And after everything that last year carried, feeling excited, joyful, and valued again has been one of the most meaningful accomplishments of all.

It was not death. It was grief.

I wrote this on May 9, 2023, after my first therapy session.

At the time, I was not writing to make sense to anyone else. I was writing because I needed somewhere to place the weight of what I could not yet fully understand. I went there thinking I needed answers about death, about fear, about the thoughts that kept appearing in the middle of ordinary days and quiet nights. But what I slowly began to realize was that fear is not always about the thing it names. Sometimes, fear is only the shape grief takes when it has been ignored for too long.

I am sharing this now not because I have all the answers, or because healing has become a straight and finished line. It has not. I am sharing this because this was the day I first allowed myself to ask for help, and the day I began to understand that some fears are not warnings, but wounds asking to be seen. Some fears are grief trying to speak.

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Today, I finally decided to see a therapist.

Since my birthday, I have been thinking about death a lot. Not because I want it. In fact, I fear it.

It has become a persistent thought, an idea that creeps in while I do the most ordinary things: walking, eating, riding a motorcycle, sitting inside a car, taking public transport.

What if 29 is the age I am destined to die?

What if it is not 50, like what I constantly tell people when we talk about the perfect human shelf life?

What if I walk on the street and get killed by a crazy bystander? What if I get into an accident because I do not know how to cross the street properly? What if I get food poisoning? What if I suddenly develop a food allergy I never had before? What if the motorcycle I am riding crashes? What if it is a car?

I thought I could easily brush the thought off, but it lingered.

It never went away.

It stayed.

It started affecting the way I saw life, and even the way I moved through my daily routines.

Until one night, it broke into my sleep like a thief in the night. Like an uninvited guest at a birthday party. Like a prisoner who had escaped from jail and found the perfect spot for a hideout.

My eyes were closed, and death came in from my head down to my chest, making my heart beat twice as fast as it normally would. It woke me up, as if sending a reminder that if I closed my eyes any longer, they might never open again.

Not anymore.

So today, I finally decided to see a therapist.

I wanted to understand what was happening to me. Why I was thinking this way. What I should do to make it stop.

I was desperate for answers.

I was longing for answers.

All I could think about were the answers.

On the fifth floor of a six-story building was a small white room where I decided to see a therapist. She was there, sitting on a black swivel chair, waiting for me.

I came in, said hi, and apologized for not showing up on our original schedule, to which she kindly said she understood.

I told her my story.

I told her how I had become scared that death was coming for me soon. I told her this was my first time asking for help, because I had never needed help before.

Or maybe because I always thought asking for help meant inconveniencing people.

I told her I wanted answers.

I told her why I could not die just yet.

Mom left three years ago with three requests I needed to fulfill.

Keep the family together.

Celebrate my little sister’s 18th birthday.

Make sure she finishes college.

They sounded simple when said as sentences. But to me, they became commandments. They became the last shape of my love for her. They became the proof that even after death, I could still be a good son.

I had done two out of three, I told her. But I still had a long road ahead before I could complete the last one.

That was why I could not die yet.

Not because I believed I had control over death, but because the idea of dying before fulfilling all three felt like failing her again. I did not want to meet her in the afterlife with unfinished promises in my hands. I did not want her to look at me and say that I failed her when she was living, and I failed her even after she was gone.

“Let’s talk about your mom,” the therapist said. “Her passing. Can you tell me more?”

I wanted answers, so why were we going there? I asked myself.

But I answered anyway.

I told her about Mom’s death, or at least the version of it I had learned to say out loud.

I told her how everything happened in a way that still feels both slow and sudden to me. How there were days when I knew we were already losing her, but I still kept looking for signs that we could keep her a little longer. How I held on to every possible option, not because I was ready to make difficult decisions, but because I was afraid of what would happen if we stopped trying.

I told her about the dialysis.

How she did not want it. How my dad did not want it. How my siblings did not want it.

And how I did.

Not because I wanted her to suffer. Not because I wanted to go against what everyone else felt. But because I thought that if there was still one more thing we could try, then maybe we should try it.

Maybe that was what love was supposed to do.

Maybe love meant refusing to surrender, even when the body was already tired, even when everyone else was already afraid to hope.

But grief has a cruel way of rewriting intentions.

What I once understood as an act of hope slowly became evidence against me. In my mind, I stopped being the child who wanted his mother to live. I became the person who made the wrong decision. The person who pushed too hard. The person who asked for one more chance, only for that chance to become part of the ending.

I told her how, after Mom died, I did not know where to place that guilt.

There were people to talk to, papers to settle, visitors to receive, decisions to make, messages to answer, and a family to hold together. So I did what I thought I was supposed to do.

I stood there.

I moved.

I answered questions.

I thanked people for coming.

I looked composed enough for everyone to believe I was strong.

And maybe I wanted them to believe it.

Because if they believed I was strong, then maybe I could believe it too.

I told her how I only cried once, inside my apartment, when I got home after the first night of her wake. It was the kind of cry that did not feel like release. It felt like something escaping before I could stop it.

After that, I packed it away.

I wore the bubbly, jolly version of myself again because that was the version people knew. That was the version that did not make people uncomfortable. That was the version that could still function.

Everyone kept saying, “You’re going to be okay.”

But not a single person asked me if I was really okay.

And I think, had even one person asked, I might have fallen apart. I might have admitted that I was not okay. That I was scared. That I was angry. That I felt guilty.

That I did not know how to be a son without a mother.

Or an older sibling with too many responsibilities.

Or a person expected to keep moving after the person who held everything together was gone.

I told her how I felt that the three things Mom asked for became my responsibility alone because she told them to me.

I told her how afraid I was to ask for help, even during the toughest times and the lowest lows, because I did not want to inconvenience the people around me.

I told her how asking for help made me feel less capable. Less competent.

I told her how I had approached life through temporary happiness because, deep inside, I still blamed myself for Mom’s death.

As if I killed her.

As if I caused it because I pushed her to undergo dialysis when she did not want to. When my dad did not want to. When my siblings did not want to.

It was me who wanted it.

And in my mind, it led to her demise.

“I think what you are experiencing now is part of what happened three years ago,” she said. “The thought of death consumes you because you see it as a failure, not a conclusion.”

I see it as a failure, not a conclusion.

Make it make sense.

“We need to unpack more of that grief because it is important to let it out,” she continued. “You have kept it for three years, and healing takes time. One year for others, five for some, twenty for a few. What is important is that you are showing up now.”

Today, I finally decided to see a therapist because I wanted answers about my thoughts on death.

Only it was not death we were answering.

It was grief.

Third Time's the Charm (And Why That's Okay)

 

Twelve years ago, fresh out of college and brimming with the kind of confidence that only comes from not yet knowing what you don't know, I enrolled in a master's program. I thought it was the logical next step. Everyone seemed to be doing it. I wasn't doing it for any particular reason, and maybe that was exactly the problem. Life had other plans, as it often does, and I didn't finish.

The second attempt didn't even make it past the first tuition fee. I paid it, looked at the number again, and realized, with a mix of defeat and reluctant clarity, that this wasn't something I could sustain. Not then. Not that way.

So I let it go. Again.

There's a particular kind of grief that comes with giving something up, especially something you wanted, or thought you wanted. It doesn't announce itself loudly. It just quietly settles into the back of your mind, occasionally surfacing as a what-if, a not yet, or a maybe someday.

For years, the master's degree lived there. In the background. Patient.

And life, to its credit, kept moving. I built a career. I figured out what I was good at and, more importantly, what I actually cared about. I traveled. I grew into myself in ways I couldn't have predicted at twenty. Those years weren't lost time — they were the years that gave me something to bring back to the classroom. I just didn't know it yet.

There's a version of this story where I feel guilty about the detours. Where I look at the years between attempt one and attempt three and see wasted time, missed opportunities, a dream deferred for no good reason. But I've made peace with a different version: that I wasn't ready then, and that's okay. Readiness isn't something you manufacture. Sometimes you just have to live until you get there.

Last year, in my early thirties, I tried again.

This time felt different from the very start. Life had settled into something I could recognize. Not perfect, not fully figured out, but mine. I had a clearer sense of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. So when the idea came back around, I didn't dismiss it. I leaned in.

I'm now midway through a Master's in Communication Management, and I'm doing it while working full time. Let me be honest about what that looks like: it means squeezing readings into lunch breaks, writing papers on weekday nights when my brain is already running on fumes, and spending a good chunk of weekends in a classroom instead of on a couch. It means saying no to things I'd rather say yes to. It means operating in a near-constant state of "a lot."

And yet. I love it.

Not in a breezy, Instagram-caption kind of way. I love it the way you love something that asks a lot of you, something that stretches you just past the edge of comfortable and dares you to keep going. That's always been my motto: embrace the uncomfortable. Not because discomfort is noble or because suffering builds character in some abstract sense, but because the things worth doing almost never feel easy at the start. The discomfort is usually a sign you're in the right place.

Being back in school as an adult is a strange and wonderful thing. You notice everything differently. You ask better questions, not because you're smarter, but because you've lived enough to know what you don't understand. You bring your actual life into the room: the career pivots, the hard conversations, the things you've had to unlearn. There's a texture to it that simply wasn't there at twenty, when school was just the thing you did before real life began.

What I didn't expect was how much it would remind me that I'm always a student, in every sense of the word. Not just here, sitting in class with a notebook and a running list of deadlines, but everywhere. In my work, in my relationships, in the quiet moments when something shifts and I realize I've been thinking about something all wrong. Learning doesn't have an endpoint. It just changes shape.

Right now, mine happens to be very literal.

I'm writing this for anyone who has a dream sitting quietly in the back of their mind, waiting. The one you've started and stopped. The one that felt impossible once, or twice. The one you're not sure is still meant for you.

It might be. Timing is not failure. A detour is not a dead end. Sometimes the reason the first two attempts didn't work is simply that they weren't supposed to. The version of you who needed to do this thing hadn't arrived yet.

That version of you might be closer than you think.

Third time's the charm. But only because the first two times were part of the journey too.

She Would Have Been 62

My mom recently turned 62.

I still say it that way: turned. Not “would have turned,” not always. Because in our family, her birthday did not stop arriving just because she was no longer physically here to celebrate it with us. The date still comes. The memories still show up. Her name still gets mentioned. Her presence still finds its way into conversations, into decisions, into the way we care for one another, and into the little moments when we suddenly remember something she used to say.

It has been six years since she passed.

But I don’t want this to be about the loss.

Loss is part of the story, of course. It always will be. When someone as important as a mother leaves, you do not simply move on as if life returned to its old shape. You learn to live around the space they left. You learn that missing someone can become part of your daily language. You learn that years can pass and yet you still catch yourself thinking, "Ma would love this," whenever something good happens, whenever you discover a new place, or whenever the family gathers and her absence is somehow impossible to ignore.

But this is not a story about what death took.

This is a story about who she was—and who she could have continued to be.

This is about imagining my mom at 62.

And knowing her, she would have been enjoying.

She would have been enjoying the simple things. A good meal. A long conversation. A family gathering. A random day out. A birthday celebration she would probably pretend was not a big deal while secretly enjoying every greeting, every small gift, and every person who remembered.

She would have been enjoying time with us. With me. With the people she loved. My mom loved spending time with me, even when there was nothing grand planned. It did not always have to be an occasion. Sometimes it was just eating somewhere. Sometimes it was just talking. Sometimes it was simply being in the same place, sharing a meal, exchanging stories, catching up on life.

I know that if she were still here, she would have been bugging me to bring her to the places I go.

She would have asked where I was going. She would have asked who I was with. She would have asked what the place looked like, what the food tasted like, whether it was worth visiting. And then, sooner or later, she would have found a way to say, “Dalhin mo naman ako diyan.”

And honestly, I wish I could.

I wish I could bring her to the places I now go to. I wish I could take her to the restaurants I discover, the cities I visit, the simple corners of the world that I know she would have loved. I wish I could watch her look around and enjoy herself. I wish I could hear her comments, her questions, her little complaints, her laughter. I wish I could sit across from her again, order food, and talk about everything and nothing.

Because that was one of the beautiful things about her. She did not always need much to be happy. Sometimes, she just wanted time.

Time with her children. Time with family. Time with the people who mattered to her.

At 62, I imagine she would have had more stories to tell. Some of them new, some of them repeated for the hundredth time. She would probably start with one topic and end up somewhere completely different. She would mention someone from years ago. She would remember a detail no one else remembered. She would laugh before finishing the story. And even if we had heard it before, we would listen again because that was part of her charm.

I imagine her at 62 giving advice no one asked for, but everyone probably needed.

I imagine her reminding us to eat, to rest, to be careful, to save money, to help others, to not forget where we came from. I imagine her checking in on people. I imagine her carrying everyone in her heart, the way mothers often do. Quietly. Constantly. Without needing recognition.

And most of all, I imagine her helping.

Because my mom loved helping others.

Not in the performative way. Not in the way that needed attention or applause. She helped because it was simply who she was. It was almost automatic for her. If someone needed something and she had a way to help, she would help. Even when she was tired. Even when she had very little left for herself. Even when she did not have anything in the tank, she would still try to give.

That was one of the strongest lessons she left us.

She once taught us this principle: when you have little and others have none, share that little so everyone else has something.

I remember that to this day.

It sounds simple, but it carries a whole way of seeing the world. It means abundance is not only measured by how much you have. Sometimes, abundance is found in the willingness to share. It means generosity is not only for the rich, the comfortable, or the people who have extra. Sometimes, generosity is most powerful when it comes from people who know what it means to have less.

My mom understood that.

She did not wait until everything was perfect before she helped. She did not wait until she had more than enough. If she had something, even a little, and someone else had nothing, she would find a way to share it. Food, money, time, care, advice, presence. Whatever she could give, she gave.

Looking back, I realize that kind of generosity is not ordinary.

It takes a particular kind of heart to give when you are also running low. It takes a deep kind of compassion to see another person’s need even while carrying your own. It takes love, discipline, and maybe even a little stubbornness to keep helping in a world that often teaches people to protect only themselves.

That was my mom.

She could be tired and still show up. She could be worried and still think of others. She could have her own problems and still ask how someone else was doing. She could have little and still make sure someone else had something.

I think that is one of the reasons her memory remains so alive. Because people like that do not really disappear. Their kindness continues moving through the people they helped. Their words become principles. Their habits become examples. Their love becomes a standard you carry with you, even years later.

And at 62, I know she would still be that person.

She would still be helping. Still giving. Still worrying about other people. Still finding ways to stretch whatever she had so someone else could be included. She would still be the person who could not fully enjoy something unless she knew the people around her were okay too.

That is probably why she would have been such a doting grandmother.

She would have been spoiling her six grandchildren.

That is what lolas do.

I can imagine it so clearly. She would have been the kind of lola who sneaks extra food onto their plates. The kind who says “last na” but gives more anyway. The kind who buys little things for them, even when no one asked. The kind who defends them when their parents are trying to be strict. The kind who would say, “Hayaan mo na, bata pa,” while quietly giving them exactly what they wanted.

She would have loved watching them grow.

She would have celebrated their smallest milestones as if they were major achievements. A new word. A school award. A drawing. A dance. A funny sentence. A birthday. A graduation. A random story from school. She would have listened to all of it. She would have been proud of all of it.

And knowing her, she would have made each grandchild feel special.

She would have found a way to connect with each one. She would know their favorite food, their little moods, their ways of asking for attention. She would probably have nicknames for them. She would probably spoil them differently, according to what each child liked. And even when she got tired, she would still make room for them because love, for her, always had room.

I sometimes think about what they missed by not having more years with her.

But again, I do not want this to be about what was lost.

I want it to be about what remains.

What remains is the love she gave us. What remains is the generosity she modeled. What remains is the way she made family feel like something you return to. What remains is the principle she taught us: that even when you have little, you can still share. What remains is the memory of a woman who loved deeply, helped freely, and found joy in being with the people she loved.

What remains is her.

Not physically, but everywhere.

She is in the way we think of others. She is in the way we offer help. She is in the way we gather around food. She is in the way we remember birthdays. She is in the way we talk about family. She is in the way her grandchildren are loved. She is in the way I move through the world with a little more tenderness because she showed me what tenderness looks like when it becomes action.

Six years later, I still miss her.

That will never change.

But I also celebrate her.

I celebrate the woman who would have been 62. The woman who would have wanted to go places with me. The woman who would have enjoyed eating, talking, laughing, and asking me to bring her along. The woman who would have spoiled her grandchildren shamelessly. The woman who would have helped even when she had little. The woman who taught us that generosity is not about excess, but about heart.

I celebrate the version of her that I believe would still be living fully, loving loudly, and giving endlessly.

Maybe she would have had more gray hair now. Maybe she would have complained about body aches. Maybe she would have taken longer to get ready but still insisted she was ready “in five minutes.” Maybe she would have wanted photos but rejected the ones where she did not like how she looked. Maybe she would have had more stories, more opinions, more reminders, more reasons to laugh.

Maybe she would have been softer in some ways and stronger in others.

Maybe 62 would have looked good on her.

I wish we got to see it.

But since we cannot, I choose to imagine it with love.

I choose to remember her not only through sadness, but through the life she would have continued to enjoy. I choose to honor her by carrying the things she taught us. I choose to speak of her as someone who was more than the day she left. She was not defined by her passing. She was defined by how she lived.

And she lived with love.

She lived with generosity.

She lived with a heart that made room for others, even when her own was tired.

Happy 62nd birthday, Mama Emily.

I hope you know that you are remembered not only with tears, but with stories. With laughter. With gratitude. With every little act of kindness we learned from you. With every meal we wish we could share with you. With every place I wish I could bring you. With every grandchild who would have been lucky to be spoiled by you.

You would have been enjoying.

And somehow, through the love you left behind, I think you still are.

India Was Never on My List

 

India was never really a top-of-mind destination for me. 

It was one of those places I knew existed in the imagination of the world: vibrant, ancient, overwhelming, spiritual, cinematic. But it was never a place I actively pictured myself going to. It was not on a vision board. It was not part of a long-held travel dream. It was not a destination I had been quietly waiting to tick off a list.

But sometimes, life has a way of handing you a door before you even realize you were ready to walk through it.

For me, that door came through work. An opportunity presented itself, and I took it. And I was lucky enough to take that opportunity with my partner, JD, beside me.

So there we were, going to India.

Because the trip had already begun as something unexpected, we decided to make the most of it. We planned our days with the intention of seeing as much as we could, knowing that India was too vast, too layered, too alive to be understood from just one place.

So we went to Delhi. Agra. Jaipur.

And what surprised me most was how each place felt like its own world.

Delhi had a pulse that was impossible to ignore. It was movement, sound, traffic, people, history, commerce, everything happening all at once. It was the kind of place that made you feel small, not in a diminishing way, but in a way that reminded you how much life is happening beyond the routines you know.

Agra felt different. There was a solemnity to it. A quietness that settled in me, especially in the presence of the Taj Mahal. It was beautiful, of course, but more than that, it felt like a monument to longing, devotion, grief, and memory. Standing there, I understood that some places are not just seen. They are felt.

Then there was Jaipur, full of color and texture and warmth. It felt almost cinematic, with its pink walls, grand palaces, detailed architecture, and streets that seemed to carry stories in every corner. If Delhi was movement and Agra was stillness, Jaipur was wonder.

Together, they gave me different pockets of amazingness in one country. Each place distinct. Each place memorable. Each place offering something I did not know I needed.

And maybe that was what made the trip poetic for me.

It was not just about going somewhere new. It was about being reminded that the world is so much bigger than the life we usually allow ourselves to see.

There is something humbling about stepping outside your comfort zone. You realize how much of your world is shaped by familiarity: the streets you know, the food you eat, the language you understand, the habits you repeat. And then you find yourself somewhere completely different, trying to make sense of new rhythms, new faces, new ways of being.

At first, it can feel overwhelming. But slowly, it becomes freeing.

Because outside your comfort zone, you remember that you are still capable of awe.

You remember that there are places you have not imagined yet that may still change you. You remember that beauty can meet you in forms you did not expect. You remember that not everything meaningful has to be planned years in advance. Sometimes, meaning arrives through an opportunity, a yes, a flight, a person you love beside you, and a place that quietly rearranges something inside you.

India was never on my list.

But maybe that is what made it special.

It found me before I knew to look for it.

And in its noise, silence, color, and wonder, it reminded me that the world is big. There is so much waiting beyond what is familiar. And sometimes, the places we never planned to visit become the ones that stay with us the longest.