Whenever I need to hide, it provides me with shelter that never ends.

Whenever I need to cry, it rains for me with rain that gently descends.

Whenever I wish to dance, the trees dance with me like my playmates.

Whenever it rains just as I’m about to step out and have a ball of fun, it offends me.

Whenever I wish to have fantasies, it presents me with springtime where each moment blends.

Whenever the sun rises, it paints my room with golden trends.

Whenever night falls, the stars whisper stories that have no ends.

Whenever I sit in silence, the soil listens to me, understands me and attends .

Whenever I feel like I’m not being heard, the wind listens to me in ways that no one understands.

Whenever I feel like I’m being left behind, the rivers keep flowing without any dependence.

Whenever I doubt my path, the mountains stand strong in silent confidence.

Whenever I’m overwhelmed by people, noise and thoughts that never end, the open air reminds me I don’t always have to pretend.

Whenever I feel like giving up, the sunrise returns like a message it send that even the darkest nights are followed by light that extends.

Whenever I laugh freely, the breeze feels like it joins and blends.

Whenever I smile at small things, the flowers bloom like they understand and transcend.

Whenever a quiet moment feels enough, my restless heart finally bends.

Whenever I rush through life, nature still waits it never pretends.

Whenever I forget to notice, its beauty still quietly extends.

Whenever my flowers bloom in their pot, my heart quietly mends.

Whenever I pause and truly feel, I realize how deeply it transcends.

Whenever I lose myself in it, I find a peace that gently extends.

Nature is too beautiful to be described in words…

It is something we feel, see, and quietly understand, beyond where language ends…

But when the world turns harsh,
it gets crushed…
and slowly dries within,

until it forgets its softness
and learns only how to be tough.

It falls from the tree of innocence,
once green and full of life,

only to reach the ground
hardened,
its green turning brown,
not to soften the world anymore,
but to survive it.

And in that silent fall,
something changes

the warmth once carried
turns into quiet distance,
the softness once given
becomes something it withholds.

Not because it wants to,
but because it had to learn
that the world does not always
handle softness with care.

Yet somewhere, deep within,
beneath all the dryness and strength,

a trace of that green remains
waiting,
not to return as it once was,

but to grow again
in a world
that finally understands it.

You’ve stood next to someone for years and never learned their name. You pass the same faces daily on the street, in lifts, in shops, and still, they don’t register.

Not because you dislike them. But because you were never taught to notice.

There are people you see every day who could disappear tomorrow, and you would only notice the space they left behind.

The Girl at the Crossing

Every morning, there was a girl at the crossing.

She always stood a few steps away from me. Always facing forward. Always holding a bag. No matter how rushed I was, she was already there. I always tried my best to compete with her… but then again, late. It became a daily habit for me to challenge myself, every day…

When the light turned green, she never hurried. She walked steadily, letting others pass, disappearing into the crowd just after me.

We crossed together countless times.
We never spoke.
Never nodded.
Never acknowledged the shared waiting.

It wasn’t avoidance. It wasn’t dislike.

I just didn’t feel like talking. One conversation felt like it would turn into a daily thing, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to be left alone. So I stayed quiet. Slowly, I stopped seeing people as people unless I needed something from them.

It simply never occurred to me that she was someone, not just a presence.

One day, I arrived and felt strangely late even though my watch told me I was on time. I felt happy for the first time that I came early, and for the first time completed my challenge of the day and that there was no one to come before me, no one to leave after me. But that happiness was an empty one. She didn’t come after that day.

The crossing felt unfinished, like a sentence cut off midway. The space beside me felt wrong. For the first time, the spot where she always stood became just… space..

I never found out what happened. Did she move? Did she change her route? Did her life simply break in a way that kept her from the crossing? I will never know. She vanished into the city, taking her name, her story, and her heart with her.

I didn’t miss her, I couldn’t, because I never knew her. I missed the weight she added to the world. The air where she usually stood felt thin, unnervingly still. It wasn’t just quiet; it was a ‘hollow’ silence. I realised then that my victory required her witness. Without her there to lose, my winning didn’t exist. I wasn’t the ‘fastest’ anymore; I was just a girl standing alone on a street corner, racing a ghost.”

I missed the space she used to fill. The invisible impact we have on each other’s environments. And that’s what unsettled me most.

I began to wonder how many other lives I had flattened into background noise.

She represents the countless people who exist beside us every day, classmates whose names we never learned, neighbours we recognise only by routine, familiar faces that make the world feel full without ever being acknowledged. We recognise them as routines, but not as lives. We don’t ignore them out of cruelty; we ignore them out of habit.

We don’t ignore them out of cruelty.
We ignore them out of habit.

To acknowledge someone’s personhood isn’t a call to form an instant connection or break your silence. It is simply a reminder to stop seeing the world as scenery.

That was when I questioned and reflected on myself in this world

What if this world were empty without any background, just with the people we want, whom we love, not the other people?

Sometimes, we crave silence no neighbour’s child crying every day, no constant honking on the roads, no traffic jams, no loud conversations through thin walls. In those moments, Solitude felt like peace, a small pocket of quiet in a crowded world.

But after encountering this moment in my journey, I realised something else. The lesson I learnt :

• The world was the first room we ever shared a space where our lives quietly overlapped with everyone else’s, long before we learned to ask for solitude.

• From our languages to our routines, from our differences to our shared moments, this world we inhabit together is something we cannot live without. It’s not about forced smiles or unwanted small talk. It is about the quiet dignity of a nod, the simple grace of eye contact, or the silent admission that the stranger beside you has a name, a home, and a heart, even if you never learn what they are.

• If I could go back to those mornings, I wouldn’t necessarily ask her name or her life story. I would simply offer a nod a small, silent signal to let her know that I see her, and that her presence matters to the rhythm of my day. I would stop treating her like a milestone in my race and start treating her like a passenger on the same journey.

• To realise that the crying child or the loud neighbour isn’t an “annoyance” happening to you, but a life happening near you. It changes your frustration into a form of shared patience.

• You aren’t their friend, but you are their “witness.” Being a witness to each other’s lives is the most basic form of community.

• The person standing next to you has a story you will never read, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

• Don’t wait for someone to disappear before realising they were a person

Look up.

No alarms, no phones, no noise to start
just quiet mornings, a peaceful heart.

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No hurried calls to pull me away,
no restless push to begin the day,
no splashes of water to break my sleep
just dreams that faded, soft and deep.

It once was life, so pure, so true…
now just a dream children never knew.

There were no screens to steal the dawn,
no rushing minds to hurry on,
no endless noise, no constant race
just time that moved with silent grace.

The wind would speak, the trees would reply,
the sun would slowly climb the sky,
and in that moment, calm and deep,
the world felt ours to wake and keep.

But somewhere, slowly, things have changed
the calm we knew has been rearranged.

Now mornings wake to buzzing tones,
to glowing screens and silent phones,
to hurried breaths and restless eyes,
that barely notice sunrise skies.

The birds still sing, the winds still flow,
the leaves still whisper soft and low
but we don’t listen like before,
we’ve closed ourselves behind a door.

And maybe that’s the quiet truth…
we didn’t lose it
we just stopped living it in our youth.

It still exists, untouched, unseen,
between the noise, behind the screen.

Waiting…
for someone to wake again,
like we once did. 🌿

Sometimes I used to wonder why people think differently
why their minds travel paths I cannot see,
why their ways of seeing the world feel so far from mine.
I used to think that those thoughts shouldn’t exist,
that they were “wrong” or “strange,”
that somehow, my perspective was the one that mattered.

I didn’t think about faces, countries, or states.
Those are easy differences to see.
What used to confuse me, what used to feel foreign,
was the unseen diversity the way humans think,
the way their hearts imagine, their minds create,
their values, fears, joys, and dreams.

Every perspective is a window into a different world.
Some are close to mine, familiar, warm,
and some are distant, strange, challenging
yet each is a spark of life, a reflection of creation itself.

And that, I realized, is what I love most about God’s creation.
Not only the mountains, rivers, or skies
but the people themselves,
each mind a universe, each heart a story.

Here, at the Don’t List, maybe we are learning
to see the beauty in differences,
to honor perspectives,
to understand that every thought, every idea, every perspective,
is a part of the grand design.

It is easy to look at skin, language, or geography,
but the real wonder lies in the invisible
the thoughts we never shared, the feelings we never knew,
the minds that create worlds we cannot imagine.

When we open ourselves to this diversity,
we start to see life in a new way
not as something to judge, correct, or control,
but as something vast, alive, and infinitely beautiful.

Because God’s creation is not just what we can touch or see
it’s the diversity of minds,
the endless possibilities of thought,
the miracle of humanity itself.

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