Mindwaves

Asia has always held a special place in my heart. Maybe it's because it was here that I gained my "independence" in my early twenties, or maybe it's simply the quiet magic the continent carries. Whatever the reason, Asia has always felt like a second home to me.

So when I made the decision to leave my full-time job and felt the need to disconnect from the world to reconnect with myself, Thailand felt like a natural choice for the six-week journey.

However, as I often like to say, the real journey always starts within.

And so my first stop was the island of Koh Phangan, where I attended a week-long mindfulness retreat bridging the mind, soul, and body. This was, in fact, my second retreat at the same center. However, the experience felt different. Unlike the first time, when I was on a short escape from my usual life, this time I had much more headspace to fully immerse myself in the process. I have always enjoyed reflecting on life, but the teachings at this center intensified my search for truth and encouraged me to observe everything with curiosity and an open mind.

"Are you really open-minded if you are close-minded toward close-minded people?"

Ishi, the founder of the retreat center, asked. The question sparked my interest and made me observe my own patterns of thinking and behavior. And this was only the beginning of a series of thought-provoking questions that left my mind wandering in search of answers I might never fully encounter.

While the retreat was incredible — I truly believe that everyone should experience something similar at least once in their lifetime — and offered a completely new way of viewing life, I knew the real value lay in carrying those teachings beyond the walls of the retreat center and practicing them in everyday life.

As I continued my road trip, I couldn't help but compare Western and Eastern philosophies of living. One of the foundational thoughts in the West is "I think, therefore I am" (René Descartes). In contrast, many Eastern teachings convey a very different message: You are not your thoughts. Observe them as they arise, but do not become them. Mindfulness, they say, is about focusing your attention on the present moment — thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surroundings — with a non-judgmental and accepting attitude.

If we are mindful enough, we become observers of life. Instead of dividing everything into black and white, good and evil, light and dark, we begin to see life in its wholeness — recognising that it is not only us living in the universe, but that the entire universe lives within us.

Mindfulness helps us shift from autopilot mode to conscious awareness — and therefore to conscious living.

With these thoughts in my mind, I looked around and noticed how many people seem to live on "autopilot" for years, often unaware that they are not fully living. Doing jobs they care little about, staying in relationships that have long outgrown their potential, waiting for the weekend only to let it slip away again. Jumping from one thing to another, always on the go, never satisfied.

I believe one of the most important historical events that happened was the Industrial Revolution. Apart from all the technological advancement it brought, there was a big change in how people perceived time. Suddenly time became synonymous with money — and so nobody wanted to waste it. Looking out of a window for an hour became quite a useless activity.

And so now, when the next technological revolution is on the horizon, the changes to our lives will be tremendous and unprecedented. Analysts predict that either AI will take over and we will be doomed, or AI will actually help us live freely by exempting us from unnecessary tasks. While the first option clearly promises a global human catastrophe, what would happen when we are no longer expected to "perform" and our worth is not measured by our productivity?

We are standing at a very critical point in human history — when we have the choice of using technological advancement to either destroy each other in the hunger for power and dominance, or quite the opposite: let technology handle the tasks and focus on what matters most: life itself.

In today's context of global wars, it might be hard to focus on the inner journey, but I believe it is more prominent than ever to connect to our breathing and therefore to our genuine selves — in the attempt of living consciously. What if next time you wash the dishes, you wash them intentionally? What if going for a walk, you notice the trees and the birds? What if the world would benefit more from stillness than from movement — and what if by switching from autopilot to conscious living, one person at a time, we can awaken the collective human consciousness that is focused on creating rather than destroying?

I hope that for anyone who took the time to read this article, it ignites some sort of reflection and reconsideration of choices — both big and small. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments and start a discussion.

Lately, I have been surrounded by conversations about whether women want to have kids or not.

Growing up in a society that worshipped having children as the one indisputable duty of every woman (and somehow not equally of men) I never really questioned my own desire to have my own little creatures. It wasn't until my late 20s that I started noticing a shift. A new trend was emerging: many women were realising they did not want to have kids at all.

What got me thinking though, is that both camps seem equally certain. Those who want children defend it passionately. Those who don't, defend that just as passionately. And somewhere in the middle of all that certainty, I started wondering: are any of us truly choosing? Or are we all still, in different ways, living out a script we didn't write?

The "natural" thing to do

For those who see having kids as the natural next step in life, I found myself asking: do they truly feel that way, or is it a belief quietly inherited from the generations before them? Not to invalidate the desire. Love, legacy, meaning, the deep pull toward creating life — these are real and profound motivations. But how much of what we want has been shaped by what we were told to want, long before we were old enough to question it?

And even for those who choose children consciously and joyfully, there is a complexity worth sitting with. Because the moment a baby arrives, something shifts permanently. The padel championship you won, the scholarship you fought for, the dream job you spent years building — all of it slowly moves to the background. You become "mom." And for your child, none of your previous titles really matter. Is that a sacrifice? A life-long reward? Maybe both?

I guess the answer depends on who you ask — and on which day.

Life too good to be living

On the other side, the reasons women give for not wanting children are equally worth examining. Fear of bringing a child into a world that often feels like a stage for ongoing catastrophes: wars, environmental collapse, economic uncertainty, the rise of AI. Love of comfort. No desire to invest so much time and energy into another person.

But here too, I find myself asking questions. Is choosing personal comfort over connection a form of freedom — or is it a new kind of conditioning? We live in an era that glorifies self-optimisation. Productivity. Personal growth. Making the most of every single moment. Suddenly, life feels so good that we don't want to miss a minute of it, because once we are responsible for someone else, the lightness fades and the focus can no longer be only on our own lives. Is it really worth it though?

The millennial layer

For those of us who grew up as millennials, this question carries an extra weight. We were the first generation to learn, in real time, about trauma: how it forms, how it travels silently across generations, how it shapes everything without us even realising. Our parents began their journey into parenthood without this knowledge. As they say, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

But we know. And knowing changes things.

Because alongside the desire (or the lack of it), a new kind of fear appears: can we avoid repeating the mistakes that were made with us? The difference is not just awareness — it is responsibility. And responsibility, when felt deeply, can be paralysing.

The question beneath all questions

So where does this leave us? Maybe not with an answer, but hopefully with a more honest question.

Women today — arguably for the first time in history — have a real choice about whether to have children or not. And that is extraordinary. But having a choice does not automatically mean we are choosing freely. We can be just as unconscious in our rebellion against tradition as we were in our compliance with it.

What if, before debating which choice is right or wrong, we turned the question inward?

Not "should women have children?" but: why do I want what I want? What is truly mine in this desire, or in this refusal? And what was handed to me by the world I grew up in — the culture I was shaped by, the expectations I absorbed before I even had language for them?

Societies are changing. We are, perhaps, still in the early and messy stages of figuring out what that even means. And in that in-between space, maybe the most radical thing any of us can do is not to defend our position — but to genuinely examine it.

It had been 8 years since someone last asked me on a first date.

Leaving a relationship that spanned almost a decade meant re-entering a world I had almost forgotten existed — the world of flirts and loaded looks, of choosing an outfit that says "I've been hitting the gym" but is not an open invitation to something else, of the never-ending games of "he's too into me" or "why did it take him 3 days to reply", of reading between lines and trying not to go crazy doing it.

Last time I was single, I was in my 20s. This time, I was in my early 30s, the age by which I once believed I would have long settled down, and which now showed me I was actually getting to know my real self for the first time. And despite society's quiet worry about women being single at this age, finding myself here again felt, surprisingly, like a fresh breath of air. Not the desperate "will I find someone?" energy of before, but something steadier: I know I've had the chapter where I was engaged and planning a wedding. I know my worth now. I won't settle unless my core needs are met. Coming from that place put me in a different position entirely. I felt powerful.

So I re-entered the dating world with curiosity rather than urgency. With exploration rather than chase.

Coming in with zero expectations meant a lower risk of disappointment; or so I thought. Were my expectations really zero, or did I secretly hope for chivalry even from someone I had agreed to keep things casual? That was one of the many questions that sat with me for many days along my new journey.

Three types of people

Re-entering singlehood showed me three types of people. Those who were genuinely enjoying their freedom. Those who were quietly suffering, convinced they hadn't yet found THE ONE. And those who had wrapped themselves in the "I love my peace too much to risk it" story — yet were still dating, still swiping, still showing up on apps with unclear intentions.

That last group puzzled me most. If your peace is so precious, what exactly are you doing here? And it made me wonder whether "I love my peace more than I'm willing to give someone a real chance" is a genuine lifestyle choice or simply a defence mechanism we've collectively agreed to call wisdom. After all — aren't we born to live in communities, in partnerships, in closeness with others? Or am I too naive to still believe that?

The honest answer is probably that it's both. A real need for self-protection, and a fear dressed up as self-sufficiency. The two are hard to tell apart, especially after you've been hurt.

Where did the gentlemen go?

And somewhere in all of this, another question kept surfacing: where did the gentlemen go?

Doing a bit of research, I found that the notion of "gentleman" was originally tied to social status and noble birth — something inherited, not earned. But over the last few centuries, the meaning shifted. It became less about where you came from and more about how you moved through the world. Your virtue. Your integrity. The way you treated people when nothing was at stake.

Growing up reading novels and watching films, I built up the idea of one day meeting a gentleman. Not a prince. Not someone who would slay dragons. Just a gentleman. And what do I actually mean by that? To me, it's someone with healthy masculinity — someone who is integral, genuinely caring, proactively attentive to the person they're with, and emotionally intelligent enough to know what that even looks like in practice.

But here is the complication. In a world that has spent the last decade labelling masculinity as mostly toxic, both men and women seem genuinely lost about what chivalry looks like today. How much is too much? How little is too little? Having this conversation with different men, I started noticing something: many of them carry the distant traces of these qualities inside them. They're there. But they stay buried, because these men are afraid — afraid of being called a machista, afraid of doing the wrong thing, afraid of misreading the room. So they do nothing instead.

Whose fault is it? Maybe that's the wrong question entirely. The more interesting one is: how do we talk about this openly, without falling into the extremes?

The nuance we lost

Because, let's be honest — extremes are where the conversation keeps dying. Did we, on our way to dismantling toxic masculinity, end up dismantling the whole idea? Is that what we were fighting for? To me the goal was never about who should be more dominant — men or women. It was always about finding the point of harmony where each of us can thrive in our masculine and feminine energies, not competing with each other but complementing. And maybe I am wrong, but to me it feels like that nuance got lost somewhere along the way, and I don't think either side is particularly happy about it.

And then dating apps arrived, and made an already complicated picture even more so. Getting back into the world of swiping reminded me how much has changed and how little effort we are collectively prepared to invest in another person. If someone we slightly like is unavailable, or requires any patience, we don't have to sit with that discomfort for long. A few more swipes and we land somewhere easier. The constant need for dopamine that eventually leads to nothing but emptiness.

Because when everything is available all the time, nothing feels worth working for.

And the woman who asks for a little consistency, a little patience, a little proactive effort? She risks becoming "too much." Too demanding. Not worth the friction when the alternatives are right there, one scroll away.

Over a century ago, men allegedly crossed oceans, wrote letters by hand, fought for the attention of someone they admired. Now some of them struggle to reply within three days. At what precise historical moment did the standard collapse so quietly — and more importantly, did anyone send us the memo?

I'm not asking for the extraordinary. I'm not asking for grand gestures or orchestrated romance. I'm asking for the basic architecture of pursuit: a little initiative, some consistency, the simple desire to actually show up for someone. Is that still too much to want?

Or have we — all of us, men and women — confused self-protection with self-sabotage so thoroughly that we've forgotten what it felt like to actually try?