What an AI Hit Song Reveals About Human Bias

We’ve created a fresh new record — a brand-new chart-topper — but this time, the twist is hard to ignore. The singer isn’t one of our kind. It isn’t a human. It isn’t even a living being.

“Walk My Walk” by Breaking Rust has taken the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart for the week ending 8 Nov 2025. A gritty voice, a tough persona, a story sung straight from the soul… except that the owner of the voice doesn’t have a soul at all. Not a single breath in that track belongs to a real person. The entire song was created by AI.

What truly struck me isn’t the technology — it’s our reaction.

For centuries, humans have sorted themselves into categories: race, colour, creed, class. We love our boxes. We assign value, expectations, and limits based on these labels. We decide who gets the spotlight and who never stands a chance.

Then comes AI — a voice with no identity, no lineage, no demographic — and suddenly the boxes don’t matter. Yet millions are listening, streaming, embracing… even believing the emotional weight of the song. And they’re doing it without asking a single question about its origins.

Or maybe there is another layer behind the scenes.
A quieter one. A more unsettling one.

Perhaps it isn’t the “artist” winning at all — it’s the algorithm underneath, nudging it upward. The same algorithm that decides what rises, what trends, and makes sure my posts get buried as soon as I put them out. An AI-generated artist reaching No. 1 might simply be the system manipulating for one of its own — the earliest sign of AI influencing not just what we consume, but what we consider worthy.

And that brings me to the part that may be the great leveller.

If we can suspend judgment and prejudices for a piece of art created by a machine — why is it so hard to do the same for another human being?

AI may be rewriting creativity, art, and even authenticity. But its greatest power might be this:
It holds up a mirror — reflecting not its flaws, but our own.

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Before Love and Hate

Photo by Max Ravier

Staring at this prompt inviting bloggers to list a few things I love or hate, I found myself at a loss. I wasn’t ready to dig through the past to pick up moments I once loved or hated, nor am I willing to hedge my future peace for this exercise. What remains then is the present continuous — but I just posted my list of eleven things that make me happy, so that door is closed for now. [Linked here]

Love or hate — I’ve stopped entertaining rumination about extreme emotions these days. If my disasters upset me or my triumphs lift me too high, then, like Kipling warned, they are both imposters I no longer want to trust. That realization keeps me steady more often than not.

Instead of revisiting old emotions for the sake of this prompt, I find myself wondering how and why we categorise experiences as love or hate in the first place. Some we announce loudly, some we bury quietly, and yet in both cases their roots run deeper than we notice.

When I look inward, the forces that still tug at my emotions are memory, fear, and desire.

Memory shapes reactions long before I am aware of it happening. A familiar fragrance softens me because it carries home, and a place can still unsettle me because it holds an old echo. Much of what I feel today is simply the past walking alongside me.

Fear arrives unannounced and shifts how I read the world. It freezes thought, magnifies loss, and convinces me that vulnerability is somehow dangerous. Some feelings grow sharper simply because fear is speaking a little louder underneath.

Desire quietly pulls the strings too, guiding me toward meaning, belonging, and validation. The haves and the have-nots inside me directly map to those same needs.

And then there are the forces outside us that keep stirring things up — society’s noise through social media, society’s expectations in daily life, and society’s unpredictable encounters that catch us off guard. Each one nudges the emotional compass decisively.

I no longer wish to drag the past into today, nor do I want tomorrow’s shadows troubling me before they appear. The aspiration is to live in the present within emotional guardrails that protect me from both inner and outer triggers. Maybe the real strength lies in mindful living — and keeping a healthy distance from the forces that rush to categorise or box our life events into love, hate, or anything else.

It isn’t easy — it’s a challenging trail — and I’m just an ordinary person learning as I go. Let’s take this path one step at a time toward mindful living.

Getting Comfortable with the New You

 

Photo by Pixabay

The hardest part of change isn’t always the change itself — it’s accepting the new version of ourselves after we have changed.

We resist change not because we dislike what’s coming, but because we’re uncertain how to feel about the person we’re becoming.

Let’s understand this with something simple — something many of us have lived through during our teenage years.

In those days, when appearance was everything, a mustache slowly became part of our identity — a quiet symbol of growing up.

At the same time, we were fascinated by movie stars — Amitabh Bachchan, Clint Eastwood, Richard Gere — and their unmistakable clean shaven style. But we weren’t allowed to shave until we reached the threshold set by our parents.

And when that day finally came, it wasn’t easy. Shaving felt like a betrayal — not of innocence, but of self. We were unsure of the new look and unsure of how others would see us.

For me, I shaved just before boarding a long-distance train to New Delhi. Those twenty-four hours on the train helped me get used to my reflection again — to know me, to like me, to be myself.

Self-acceptance sometimes needs distance — from places, from people, from the mirror that remembers too much. It takes a little space where the old identity cannot interfere with the new one taking shape. Perhaps that’s why the sages preferred isolation.

Transformation rarely happens in an instant.
It unfolds in the quiet hours between what was and what will be — like those twenty-four hours on the train.

Change asks for courage.
But acceptance asks for gentleness.

So, when life demands a new version of you — a new role, a new rhythm, a new mindset — take a pause. Give yourself time to meet the stranger you’re becoming.

Because the first person who must accept the change is you.

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🔗 Read Reflect Rejoice

The Obstacle in Our Path

Once upon a time, a king decided to teach his people a quiet lesson. He had a large boulder placed right in the middle of a busy roadway, then hid nearby to see what would happen.

One by one, the kingdom’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers came along. Each complained loudly about the obstruction, blaming the king for not keeping the roads clear — yet every one of them skirted around it, without the slightest effort to move the stone or solve the problem.

After a while, a peasant appeared, carrying a heavy load of vegetables. When he reached the boulder, he stopped, set down his burden, and began to push. It took all his strength, but after much effort and straining, he finally managed to roll the stone off to the side of the road.

As he turned to lift his vegetables again, he noticed a small purse lying where the boulder had been. Inside were a few gold coins and a note — a quiet acknowledgment from the king, meant for the one who had cleared the path.

When the news spread across the village, people were moved by the lesson — one that many of us still forget:

Every obstacle carries within it a hidden opportunity to improve our condition.

The roadblocks in our path are rarely there to stop us; more often, they are placed there to make us stronger, wiser, richer, and more capable than before.

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Tonight, we mourn in silence

When peace breaks, hearts do too.

☕ Enjoy the Coffee, Not the Cup

Yesterday, in Look Beyond the Looks [Click Here], we reflected on how beauty often clouds our empathy — how we tend to value what’s pleasant to the eye more than what truly matters. Today, let’s explore a similar truth about how appearances influence our sense of happiness.

We humans are wired to understand best through stories, and this old one captures the essence perfectly.

Once upon a time, a group of alumni — all well-settled in their careers — visited their old university professor. The conversation soon drifted toward life and work, filled with complaints about stress, pressure, and the endless chase for balance.

Listening patiently, the professor excused himself to the kitchen. He wanted to serve them coffee — just as he had done years ago when these same students stayed up late, dreaming big, debating endlessly, and sketching plans for the future.

But there was one problem: he didn’t have enough shiny mugs. So he returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups — porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain-looking, some expensive, some exquisite — and invited everyone to help themselves.

When each of them had picked a cup, the professor smiled and said,
“If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up first, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. It’s only natural to want the best for yourselves — but that very instinct is the source of your stress.”

He paused, letting the thought sink in.

“What you truly wanted was coffee, not the cup. Yet you consciously went for the best cups and even glanced at what others had chosen. Life is the same. Life itself is the coffee — the jobs, money, and social positions are just cups. They’re only tools to hold Life, and they don’t change its quality. But by focusing too much on the cup, we forget to enjoy the coffee inside.”

He ended softly,
“So, don’t let the cups drive you — enjoy the coffee instead.”

It’s a story that never gets old because its truth doesn’t either. In our pursuit of the best-looking “cup,” we often overlook the simple joy of living — the aroma, warmth, and taste of life itself.

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🌿 Look Beyond the Looks

 

It’s strange how easily we mistake beauty for worth. The eye judges long before the heart decides — and that quiet bias shapes how we see one another, and even how we see other living beings. There’s a reason we don’t admire the crow the way we admire the parrot.

Our compassion, when it arrives, is rarely free of preference. We are moved by what we find beautiful and unmoved by what we find unpleasant. It feels acceptable to kill a cockroach because it looks creepy, yet unthinkable to harm a butterfly because it’s pretty. But even the cockroach, unsettling as it seems, plays its part in nature’s intricate design.

Beauty often amplifies compassion, while silence mutes it. We seldom march for fish — not because they don’t suffer, but because we neither hear their cries nor see their tears. We’ve come to believe that sound and sight are measures of worth. A fish may not scream or weep, but it bleeds the same red as we do. When empathy depends on how something looks, we lose sight of what kindness truly means.

Humanity’s vastness is often seen as a burden on this planet — billions of us consuming, producing, and polluting. Yet we rarely think of what our sheer numbers could accomplish if we turned even a fraction of our energy toward compassion.

Change doesn’t begin with grand gestures; it begins quietly — when we stop measuring empathy by appearances. Life is not a hierarchy, with humans on top and the rest below, but a shared continuum of existence. The tree that cools our street, the bird that carries seeds across distances, the bee that sustains our crops, and the humble worm that nourishes the soil — all are part of the same circle that keeps us alive.

A few thoughtful acts may seem small, but multiplied across billions, they become a quiet revolution of empathy. And perhaps, by doing a little for everyone else, we might learn to live a little better with ourselves.

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Goodbye, Privacy of Thoughts

photo courtesy

The other day, I was discussing the upcoming trip with my wife, and barely an hour later, my phone began showing advertisements from travel portals and a handful of airlines.
It’s no secret that our smartphones are actually very smart — always eavesdropping, quietly learning, and constantly listening.

But believe me, our generation is still fortunate. Our phones may listen to what we say, but our thoughts are our own — at least for now. The generations that follow may not be as lucky.

There are already laboratories working on technology that allows physical actions to be controlled by thoughts. It sounds miraculous — a breakthrough that can change lives, especially for those with limited mobility. Recently, on October 27, 2025, the world celebrated when the UK’s first Neuralink patient successfully controlled a computer with his thoughts. And rightfully so.

But behind that celebration lies a quiet unease.

We are beginning to open the door to our own minds. Once that door is open — once machines learn to read and interpret our neural signals — can we really be sure it will stay a one-way exchange?

What begins as medical innovation may soon find itself in the marketplace, where ethics have another meaning. From thought-controlled devices, it’s only a short step to thought-analyzed advertising, thought-monitored workspaces, and thought-influenced behaviour. The lines that separate what we do, what we say, and what we think are blurring faster than we realize.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning thrive on data — and there is no data more personal than our thoughts. The idea that our unspoken feelings, private reflections, or quiet fears could someday be interpreted, stored, or even predicted by a machine should make us pause.

We once feared that technology would read our messages.
Now, it may one day read our minds.

I’m not against progress. Every great leap forward carries both promise and peril. But somewhere in this pursuit of innovation, I hope we remember to preserve a corner of our personal self — a small, silent space where our thoughts remain untouched, where they can still breathe freely, without algorithms listening, measuring, or manipulating.

Because the day we lose that, we may gain convenience — but lose something far more precious:
the sanctity of our inner world.

Thank you for reading. If this reflection resonated with you, do share your thoughts below — while they’re still your own.

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The Woman by the Window

 

Photo Courtesy

Sometimes we wake up with a strange unease — a hollow feeling that something unpleasant is about to happen.
Some say the body senses trouble before the mind does.
Daniel’s left eye had been twitching since morning.
He wasn’t a superstitious man, but when life is in turmoil, even reason looks for omens.

On another day, he would’ve shrugged it off — determined to make a bad morning better as the day went on.
But not today.

All night, Daniel had simmered from a bitter argument with his ex-wife — the kind that replays long after the words end.
“There’s so much in common between evil and Eve,” he muttered when she’d shown up that morning — with her new partner.

His thoughts were sharp, restless. To escape them, he drove without direction, trying to reassure himself that “the world isn’t ending — there must still be kind, rational people out there.”

After an hour of aimless driving, he spotted a small café glowing with warm morning light. For a moment, he thought a cup of coffee might calm the storm inside him.

Inside, the air smelled of fresh bread and quiet — two things Daniel felt he no longer understood.
He told himself, “This will be a happy day. No matter what.”

He sat near the counter, ordered coffee, and noticed the room — a mix of college students on laptops, friends chatting softly before work.
All men, he realized.
Maybe that’s why it felt so peaceful.

And then, he saw her.
A woman sat by the window, reading a book, utterly at peace.
There was something infuriating about her calmness — as if life itself had placed her there to mock him, to remind him of all the grace he’d lost.

Before he could stop himself, he said aloud, his voice cutting through the café:
“Today,” he declared loudly, “is the first day of the rest of my life! Coffee and muffins for everyone — except that woman!”

The waiter blinked, unsure if he’d heard right.
But Daniel’s face left no room for questions.

Moments later, the café hummed with quiet delight. Trays of muffins appeared on tables — for everyone except her.

The woman looked up from her book. Their eyes met. And then, to his surprise — she smiled.
“Thank you,” she said gently.

Daniel felt irritation rise. He was expecting her to react the way his wife would have.
“Fine! Add pastries for everyone — except her!”

Again, the woman smiled. Again, she said, “Thank you.”

Confusion replaced anger. Maybe all women aren’t the same, he thought to himself.
He got up and approached the window, half-demanding, half-pleading,
“What’s wrong with you, lady? I keep excluding you, and you keep thanking me!”

The waiter, who had stepped closer anticipating trouble, leaned in and said softly, with a knowing smile,
“She’s not upset, sir. She owns this café.”

Daniel froze.
For a second, the air itself seemed to laugh. Then, a chuckle escaped him — the first in weeks.

“I do own the café,” she said softly. “But that’s beside the point. I’ve learned not to lose my inner peace just because someone else has lost theirs. My peace is my own.”

Sometimes life holds up a mirror in the strangest ways.
We strike out at others to soothe our own pain — and life gently shows us how foolish that is.

He looked at her once more and, for the first time, saw that she looked nothing like his ex-wife.
She was simply a woman by the window — and he, perhaps, was finally ready to heal.

Thank you for stopping by and reading my story. I hope it left you with a moment of reflection — do visit again for more such tales of life and perspective.

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🌿 Read Reflect Rejoice

Between No and Yes

 

Photo Courtesy

Our children have a particular advantage when it comes to turning a parent’s “no” into a “yes.”
They play with emotions — pleading eyes, gentle persistence, and the disarming charm of a smile.
It’s persuasion in its purest, most instinctive form.

But that equation doesn’t quite work in the real world.

The other day, while sitting at a street-side café, I watched young vendors weave through the crowd, their voices soft but assured. They moved with purpose — gestures measured, never too forceful, never too timid.

They seemed to understand, almost intuitively, that between a “no” and a “yes” lies a space — a space where persuasion lives. And they knew just how to move within it: how warmth could turn hesitation into agreement, and how pressing too hard could turn that same hesitation into refusal.

It made me think about how persuasion works far beyond sales. Whether in boardrooms, relationships, or everyday conversations, influence isn’t about pressure — it’s about presence. It’s about sensing the invisible boundary between interest and irritation, between trust and resistance.

Persuasion, at its best, is an art of balance — knowing when to speak, when to listen, and when to let silence do the work.

A “no” is rarely final. More often, it’s a pause — a sign that the listener has reservations, needs more clarity, or simply seeks to protect their sense of control. Persuasion lives in this space between certainty and hesitation. It isn’t manipulation — it’s understanding, the patient art of aligning perspectives rather than overpowering them.

Recognizing when persuasion will work — and when it won’t — is a quiet mark of wisdom. A hesitant “maybe,” a thoughtful silence, or a request for more information are signs that dialogue is alive. But when the “no” is firm, repeated, or emotionally charged, persistence can only close the door further. In such moments, respect becomes the highest form of persuasion.

Ultimately, persuasion is less about changing minds than about creating connections. Between “no” and “yes” lies not a battlefield but a bridge.

And perhaps that’s what both the young vendor on the street and the child at home already understand:
that persuasion’s secret lies not in the push, but in the pause —
in knowing when to stop, smile, and simply wait.

Thank you for taking the time to read.
If this reflection resonated with you, I invite you to return for more whenever you can create an opportunity..
Until then, stay curious — and may every “no” in your life lead you a little closer to understanding.

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💬 Read Reflect Rejoice