Unlearning — Kunal Gupta

He saw the bend and remained proud

That has now expired

What we need

They ran because the ones beside them were running

It is that way because we choose it to be.

Somewhere around four in the morning, I woke up in

The same jar, three different desserts

Chasing the best view

Taking time to think

The deciding took a second.

The whole day is a forward lean

He had been begging to go to the pool, and

We had just finished dinner.

I often forget how much my physical environment shapes my

We were at a dinner party last week in Lisbon

The Lisbon I knew was never the whole picture

Mistaking familiarity for the full picture

Reasons not to commit

What I needed help to see

The contribution was the connection

The right to annoy her kids

Curiosity doesn't always read the script

A blank wall invites chaos.

I had been studying with an intensity I hadn't felt in a long time.

The card hadn't aged a single day.

Some connections don't need maintenance.

The impatience was mine.

The things we optimize away are often the things we can't get back on purpose.

I wanted to return to who I was, but nostalgia only showed me who I've become.

I discovered that presence doesn't need perfect conditions when I found myself meditating in chaos.

I started noticing how different activities either activated or soothed the background hum of my nervous system.

Some thoughts need to move through me without landing anywhere at all.

I forget that what others see as extraordinary has become the unremarkable backdrop of my daily life.

I stopped trying to solve everything and found that the weight simply lifted on its own.

A must-have ritual to start each year

I keep asking others the question I'm afraid to answer myself.

A pause so I can decide if I want to make any turns.

I learned that getting things wrong didn't mean I was wrong.

I was pulled into the momentum of shared movement.

Disagreement and misunderstanding are built into the structure of relationships.

Parking in Lisbon is a particular kind of stress.

The surprising joy in caring about something that didn't matter at all.

Momentum doesn’t care about the source, it just wants to keep going.

I hadn’t gained an hour, I had simply noticed one.

Repeated gestures, not of productivity, but of presence.

Sometimes the future is already here.

There was a tenderness I didn’t realize I had been craving.

I used to think an action was enough.

I used to think growth was about getting stronger, faster, better.