Unravelled - Chapter 1: The mirror in the silence

Losing your place can sometimes help you find your perspective

The alarm didn’t ring anymore, but I still woke up at 9:00 every morning, as if my body was holding onto a symphony my life no longer played. The desk I once hurried to now sat quiet, untouched, like an old friend who had nothing left to say.

At first, the silence felt like failure. Like the world kept moving and somehow left me behind.

But then something happened in that stillness.

In that strange silence, stripped of goals and noise, I began to see humanity not as a machine to be fixed or a ladder to be climbed, but as a tender, aching soul, fragile, beautiful, endlessly searching. The stillness became a mirror, and in it, I saw more than just myself. I saw all of us.

We’ve all seen those heavy posts, the ones about silent recruiters, cold rejections, and the long, dark spiral of despair. They’re real. They hurt.

When all that’s left is truth stripped of hope, it hurts.

When the warmest words of encouragement come not from people, but from lines of text from AI, it hurts.

I wandered through a wilderness of thorns, where each step felt like a prayer unanswered, and even heaven seemed to watch in silence. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I chose a different perspective. Not because I’m braver, or better, but because I knew the world wouldn’t suddenly soften its edges for me or for you. The tides don’t turn just because we’re tired of swimming.

But even in that unforgiving current, there’s a truth that’s easy to miss: for someone barely staying afloat, clinging to threads of hope while weighed down by invisible boulders of fear and silence, a single ripple of kindness matters. A reply matters. Even a “Hi” becomes a lifeline. Not because it solves anything, but because it reminds them: that you’re seen.

We don’t always need to offer solutions. We don’t need to hand out hope wrapped in clichés. Sometimes, all we need to do is show up. To whisper across the void, “I’m here.” And maybe, in that smallest gesture, we hold space for someone else to breathe again.

And to those still treading water in choppy seas of job searches, I wish I could point to a clear horizon, a promise of steady land just ahead. But let’s be honest: you already know the truth. Sometimes, the shoreline doesn’t appear when we want it to. Sometimes, it doesn’t appear at all.

Hope, once a steady companion, begins to feel like a luxury. You wait, refreshing inboxes, sending feelers, convincing yourself the next week will turn the tide. But the tides don’t turn for everyone. Some just drift longer. And in the drift, even the strongest swimmers get tired. When rent rises faster than morale, when groceries compete with guilt, when savings become shadows, how do you keep your chin above the water? How do you breathe when the economy tightens like an invisible rope at the throat?

And yet, even in that heaviness, there comes a moment, not loud, not miraculous, just a slow, almost imperceptible shift, when you realise the storm may not pass soon, but you can still decide how you face it. That maybe, just maybe, survival isn't always about reaching the shore, but about finding a rhythm in the waves. It doesn’t make the water warmer or the sky brighter, but it offers a kind of inner stillness. A decision not to let the current steal your spirit, even if it’s allowed to take your plans.

Perhaps that’s not the only path forward. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a different perspective. This pause, this uninvited stillness, isn’t only an exile from the race, but an invitation to reimagine the journey. What if, instead of chasing leads or clinging to outcomes, you reached out simply to connect? Not with agendas, but with curiosity. To share ideas. To swap stories. To remember you’re not alone on this ocean.

Have you ever had a whisper of a thought—what if I tried…? only to dismiss it as silly or indulgent? But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was your spirit knocking gently on your own door. Photography. Volunteering. Writing. Gardening. Hiking. Music. Fitness. We push our children toward these things believing they will grow but somewhere along the way, we forget that we are still growing too.

These aren’t distractions from the storm, they are lighthouses: small, glowing beacons that bring peace, presence, and sometimes even people who stay. And in nurturing them, we might just find the version of ourselves we’ve long forgotten was waiting there, quiet, but unbroken.