litponder

There’s a moment in life—quiet, heavy, almost suffocating—when everything narrows down to one question: “Why me?” Not loudly. Not dramatically. But internally. Repeatedly. Relentlessly. It shows up when life doesn’t go as planned. When something cracks open your sense of control. When the story you thought you were living suddenly rewrites itself without your permission. A breakup. A diagnosis. A betrayal. A loss. A failure. And in that moment, you don’t want philosophy. You don’t want advice. You just want an answer. Why me? When Dante Asked the Same Question While reading Canto II of Dante’s Inferno , I stumbled upon something deeply human—something that didn’t feel like poetry or literature, but like a mirror. Before Dante begins his journey into Hell, he hesitates. He stops. Doubts himself. Questions everything. And then he turns to Virgil and essentially asks: Why me? I am no one. Why am I chosen for this? Think about that. Dante isn’t standing a...

Do We Really Need Closure? The Truth About Healing Without Answers Where This Thought Began The other day, I found myself thinking about two people I know. One of them has been in therapy for a long time, trying to come to terms with a relationship that ended almost three years ago. Even now, he struggles with closure, as if something was left unfinished—something he still needs to understand or accept. Maybe the ending had been forming long before it actually happened, but it never felt complete to him. And then there is someone else I know who lost her mother. She never went to therapy. She never tried to formally process it or find a way to say goodbye. She simply continues to live with her memory, carrying it quietly, without ever calling it closure. Watching both of them, in such different ways, led me to a thought I couldn’t quite shake off. What if closure is not something that arrives the same way for everyone? Or more quietly— What if it ...

Where This Thought Began I didn’t arrive at this thought in a structured way. It wasn’t a theory I set out to build. It came to me quietly, almost unexpectedly, while I was reading Circles of Hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy . There’s something unsettling about the way Dante imagines hell. It isn’t chaotic. It isn’t random. It is deeply organized. Each punishment is precise, almost engineered, as if every sin has found its perfect consequence. It made me pause, not because of the brutality, but because of the structure. The idea that outcomes can be designed so deliberately. And somewhere in that reading, a question stayed with me longer than the text itself. What if, in our own world, we are also living inside systems that are designed just as deliberately, not to punish sins, but to shape behavior? The Comfort of Moral Identity We often measure ourselves by our morality. We ask, almost instinctively, am I a good person? And most of us believe that we are. We don’t intend harm...

Friendship Isn’t Fixed:  How Friends Evolve With Life Stages. The Myth of the “Best Friend” We grow up believing in one central idea: that somewhere in our lives, there will be one person who knows everything about us. Our habits. Our past. Our emotional patterns. Our default human . And we hold on to that idea tightly. Especially as women. We don’t just want friendships. We want that one person . But life… doesn’t stay that simple. Where This Thought Began This reflection began while reading the poem  Friendship by David Henry Thoreau He writes about friendship as something almost untouched by time. A connection that doesn’t need constant communication. A bond that exists even in long silences. It’s a beautiful idea. And yet… it stayed with me not because I agreed with it, but because I didn’t fully. If you’ve read my thoughts on grief (read here: Who Gets to Grieve? )  you’ll know I often question ideas that sound perfect but feel incomplete in ...

Does everyone grieve the same way, or does life decide how much space grief is allowed to take? I didn’t arrive at this thought intentionally. It came to me quietly while I was reading The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe . There was something unsettling not just about the atmosphere, but about the way emotion lingered in that world, heavy and unprocessed. It stayed with me long after I put the book down, and somewhere in that silence, a question began to form. Who gets to grieve? And more importantly, who gets the time and space to process grief without interruption? When Grief Has No Time to Exist Grief, I’ve realised, is one of those raw human experiences that doesn’t follow any rulebook we try to impose on it. We like to believe that loss is equal for all, that everyone feels it the same way. But while pain itself may be universal, the way it is experienced is not. For someone struggling financially, grief often becomes something that has to be managed, ...