Nobody tells you how much of life happens in between plans. In school, we thought life was all about college admissions, first love, first heartbreak, first job. We imagined it as a series of grand arrivals. But somewhere between the wanting and the waiting, the quiet began to hum louder than everything else. It starts small. The moment you sit alone at a café and realize you are not alone, you are just there. The train rides where you don’t plug in your earphones...the soft ache of a Sunday evening that makes you want to call no one in particular, yet everyone at once! There’s no applause in these moments.

 

No spotlight. Yet they shape you more than the chaos ever did. Maybe that’s what growing up actually is: Realising that the big days don’t define us, but the in-between ones do. The world doesn’t announce when your heart heals, or when you stop missing someone, or when you finally feel okay waking up again. It just happens quietly, like a sunrise you almost missed while scrolling. We live in a world that romanticises momentum. You are supposed to be hustling, chasing, arriving. But what if the real magic lies in standing still? In learning to notice how light filters through your curtains. How your heartbeat slows when you finally stop trying to fix everything.

 

How silence is not emptiness, but a home. There is peace in knowing that not everything needs to be turned into a story or a goal. Some days are meant to be lived, not documented. Some emotions are meant to be felt, not explained. And maybe, that’s enough. Because real life isn’t a highlight reel. It’s the space between one plan and the next. It’s the laughter that fades into comfortable silence...the half-finished texts, the smell of rain that reminds you of nothing specific, yet everything at once. So here’s to the quiet between things like the soft, almost invisible rhythm that carries us forward. The truth is, life doesn’t wait for the next chapter. It’s already happening, right here, right now, in the stillness we forget to notice.