I Didn’t Know What to Write About (Until Now)

In a crowded hospital waiting room, I finally understood what I want to say, and why it has to begin with the books that shaped me.

I’m sitting in a crowded waiting room, just outside the surgeon’s doors. My dad is inside, getting his shoulder operated on. A shoulder worn down by years of work, by a lifetime of using his hands to earn a living.

I come from a family that’s always made our way by hand labor, where your worth is tied to what you can produce, how long you can keep going, how much your body can handle before it finally says it has had enough.

Maybe that’s why my mind has always felt busy. Restless. Always chasing something. Thoughts that run ahead into the future or circle endlessly through the past. I’ve never really known how to just be here. Most days, the moment I’m actually living doesn’t even register. I’m too busy planning, overthinking, replaying conversations that probably don’t matter anymore.

Five years ago, I lost my job. The company shut down its local office. They called it operational closure, but for me it felt like being cut off without warning. I felt ashamed, useless, like I had nothing to show anymore. For a while, I spiraled. I didn’t know who I was without the title, the paycheck, the daily rhythm of being needed.

But now, from the hindsight, that moment became a dividing line. For the first time, I stopped trying to outrun myself. I stay home. I let things slow down. I gave myself time to relearn things I’d forgotten — things like curiosity, or attention. I have to face the fear I always pushed away: what happens if I stop? What if I don’t go back?

There were days I felt like I was wasting my life. But the only thing that kept me steady was reading. At first, just to fill the time. But then it became something else. It started changing the way I thought. I read books I didn’t understand completely but wanted to sit with. Books about how the mind works. Books about how we create so much suffering just by how we think.

Some of those books stayed with me. Others didn’t. But they all added something. They made me feel less alone in my own head.

Over the past five years, I’ve read so many books that have changed me in ways I didn’t always notice at first. I’m not the same person I was back then, and the books I’ve lived with are a big part of that. Which is why I finally understand what I want to do here, on this Substack. This isn’t going to be a place for formal reviews or clever summaries. I’m not trying to be a critic.

This is going to be a space where I reflect on what I read and how it touches my life. How it shifts the way I see. How it helps me stay present. I’ll be writing about books like The Power of Now, Awareness by Anthony de Mello, The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Books that speak about the same deep truth from different angles. I can’t always explain that truth clearly, but I feel it. And when I read slowly enough, I start to understand it a little more.

Some ideas land right away, like they’ve been waiting for me. Others don’t click until much later. It all depends on where I am, what I’ve lived, and what I’m ready to see. That’s why this won’t be a place for neat conclusions. I tend to feel too much and try to say too many things. I get lost when I try to sum it all up.

But I’m learning not to force clarity too soon. If I just keep writing, slowly and honestly, something inside me finds its way. My reading becomes part of me. It doesn’t just give me ideas. It gives me something deeper. A kind of direction. A way to move through the dark.

Thank you for being here. My first full reflection on The Power of Now will arrive next week.

Until then, I’ll be still reading.