Our Parallel World

 

Almost a decade ago, I wrote about the internet as a place where ordinary people could build a livelihood. I listed blogs, online teaching, stock photography, YouTube, e-commerce, and a handful of other possibilities.

Looking back, I realise I underestimated not the opportunity but the scale.

The internet turned out to be far bigger than I had imagined. It has quietly become a parallel world—one with its own economy, professions, marketplaces, classrooms, entertainment, friendships, and communities.

In its earliest days, the internet was little more than a vast library. We searched for information, exchanged emails, and occasionally participated in forums. It connected people, but very few imagined it as a place to build an entire career.

Then it became the world's largest marketplace, quietly transforming how goods and services were bought and sold.

Soon after came the age of creators. Almost before we realised it, the internet had evolved into a provider of knowledge, news, opinions, and entertainment.

Teachers began reaching students across continents. Professionals offered consultancy services without ever meeting their clients. YouTubers, podcasters, streamers, and influencers turned what were once hobbies into full-time professions.

For the first time in history, a young person could choose where to build a career. One path lay in the physical world—offices, factories, hospitals, construction sites. The other lay in the digital world—websites, platforms, and online communities.

Both were equally real. Both demanded discipline, effort, and consistency. But there was one important difference. The physical world changes gradually, while the internet rarely stands still. 

And now we stand at another turning point.

Artificial Intelligence has arrived as another general-purpose technology, much like electricity, the internet, or the smartphone. It is steadily becoming part of everyday life. Whether we welcome it or resist it is almost irrelevant. It is here to stay.

There was a time when one had to practise and persevere to acquire specialised skills. Today, with the help of AI, almost anyone can generate software code, edit images at near-expert levels, and prepare reports, presentations, translations, marketing copy, illustrations, music—even videos.

Yesterday's competitive advantage becomes tomorrow's minimum expectation.

Hasn't that always been the story of progress? So where should the next generation look? 

I don't think the answer lies in chasing the latest tool or the newest platform. It lies in asking a better question:

What problem needs solving?

Because the harder challenge is often not solving a problem—it is recognising that the problem exists in the first place.

Technology will keep changing.

But human needs remain remarkably consistent. We want to save time, reduce costs, improve our health, educate our children, feel safer, make better decisions, enjoy ourselves, and connect with others.

And sometimes, the most interesting opportunities appear not because technology has changed—but because the problem itself has changed.

That is why I believe we should spend less time asking, "What skill should I learn?" and more time asking, "What new problems are emerging?"

Look around. There are plenty of disruptions already shaping tomorrow's challenges.

Electric vehicles are creating entirely new ecosystems. Solar power is changing how homes and businesses consume energy. Quick commerce has reshaped our expectations of convenience. Longer life expectancy is creating needs that barely existed a generation ago—not just in healthcare, but in accessibility, companionship, and independent living.

Some of tomorrow's professions haven't even been imagined yet. Every new solution quietly creates new problems. And those problems are tomorrow's opportunities.

Some will be large enough to build companies around. Others will be small niches—but still meaningful enough to sustain a livelihood.

Don't fall in love with the tool. Fall in love with the problem.

Regardless of whether you choose to build your future in the physical world or in this parallel world, embrace AI rather than fear it. Over time, it will no longer feel like a separate technology. Like the internet itself, it will simply become part of the environment in which we work, create, and live.

The people who continue to thrive will not be those who chase every new tool, but those who keep noticing what the world needs next—and have the curiosity to act on it.

Because in the end, the tools will keep changing.

The people who notice tomorrow's problems will always have work to do.

The Soul Wears the Body: Part 2 - The Witness

Image credit: Robert Clark@pexels

In the previous part, I explored a simple but unsettling idea — that perhaps the body is merely something the soul wears, much like a garment eventually set aside. That thought, while abstract, leaves behind a more immediate and pressing question.

If the body is just the vessel, what determines how that vessel is formed in the first place?

Biology offers a compelling answer. Our structure comes from instructions passed down and reshaped over generations. It explains how life is built, and how it adapts.

And yet, something about this explanation feels incomplete.

It is rational, even elegant. But when it comes to explaining why two individuals — siblings, or even twins — can be so similar in form and yet so distinct in their experience of life, the explanation often rests on probability, on variation, on what we loosely call chance.

Is chance enough to explain the feeling of being me?

Because beyond structure and variation lies something far more immediate — the undeniable sense of self. Two people may share nearly identical biological blueprints and still encounter the world in entirely different ways. One may carry restlessness, another calm. One may feel deeply connected, another curiously detached. These are not differences in structure; they are differences in experience.

So where do we place that experience? Where do we locate the Atman — the self, the observer, the one who is aware?

Biology explains the instrument. Psychology goes a step further, showing how memory, conditioning, and environment shape what we call the ego — the narrative of "I am this."

But even that narrative is not stable. It shifts with time, with circumstance, with perspective. And yet, beneath it, there appears to be a quiet awareness that existed and observed the coding of "my" DNA, and continued to observe the changes in me without itself being altered.

Is that what we refer to as the soul?

Perhaps it is not something that constructs, but something that witnesses — not always in a passive way, but maybe monitors to some extent. Not the architect of the structure, but the presence within which the structure thrives. This does not contradict science — it simply lies outside its scope.

If that is true, then the idea from Part 1 takes on a different weight. The body does not just wear out with time — it may never have been the central story to begin with.

And that leaves us with an uncomfortable possibility.

What if everything we spend our lives trying to define — our identity, our differences, our sense of "me" — belongs only to the surface? For the moment? For this body only?

What if the deeper truth is in what quietly remains the same? What is capable of traveling out and witnessing another "me"?

And if that is so, then the real question is not:

What am I made of?

But —

What am I made for?

The Soul Wears the Body: Part 1 - The Garment

I watched a child playing in the park yesterday. Laughter spilling into the crisp morning air.

And I couldn't help but notice the fragile impermanence of it all.

The body is vibrant. Full of energy. Yet in the grand sweep of time, it is passing. It grows, ages, and eventually returns to the earth.

But what of the soul?

What is it that animates this temporary vessel — this soul that wears the body like a garment?

Throughout history, thinkers and sages have circled the same question. The body is transient; the soul, they say, is eternal. Just as we discard old clothes that no longer fit, the soul moves on when the body has fulfilled its role. Birth, growth, aging, death — these are the cycles we witness every day. And yet the soul remains untouched. Timeless. Beyond the confines of space and time.

Different traditions offer different words for this same truth. In Hindu philosophy, the soul — Atman — continues its journey across lifetimes, seeking liberation. In Western and Christian thought, the soul is eternal, a spark of the divine that transcends physical form. Whatever the lens, one idea persists: our bodies are vessels. Temporary homes for something far greater.

If you allow yourself the liberty of independent thinking, you may arrive at your own definition. Perhaps the soul is something closer to a set of particles — small enough to be invisible, vast enough to carry all our genetic memory, and enduring enough to keep moving through eternity.

But this reflection is not just philosophy. It is a gentle reminder for everyday life.

If the body is transient, how might we live differently? If the soul is eternal, how does it shape the way we experience joy, grief, and love? How does this awareness change the way we treat ourselves, others, and the world around us?

Perhaps the most profound lesson is simple: the body is temporary, but our essence is not.

And yet — how often do we live as though the opposite were true?

If our bodies are but garments, how might we live differently knowing the soul is eternal? And what does liberation truly mean?

In Part 2, we will explore the journey of the soul — the cycles it traverses, and the reflections it offers for our everyday lives.

Thank you for visiting my blog. If this reflection found something in you, stay with me — Part 2 is coming soon.

Eden Gardens

Written in response to the prompt Friday Writings #236: Of Gardening and Living and Such…

Eden Gardens

Gardening, they say, began in Eden.
Is that what made me part of you? she asked.
Not the garden—temptation shaped our world.
A single fruit altered perfection.
Rational yields to temptation too soon.
Act for yourself. Apples bear no thorns.

“Gardening is not a rational act.”

— Margaret Atwood

Maya: The Illusion of Ownership

Do you ever find yourself treating a public parking spot as if it were your own — oddly satisfied when it's free, visibly upset when it's taken?

Last weekend, going up the escalator at the metro station closest to my current home, I caught myself thinking: I have some sort of ownership of this place. Not belonging, exactly — something just short of it. A milder version of the instinct a child has after grabbing a toy in a supermarket.

I sat with that feeling on the train. It isn't ownership in any real sense. It's quieter than that, almost instinctive. Perhaps it comes from familiarity — the repetition of passing through the same space, the rhythm of journeys starting and ending there.

Like me, many people save it on the map as "home metro station." Somewhere along the way, usage begins to blur into ownership.

I've felt it elsewhere too. A favorite parking spot that brings a small happiness when it's free — and a surprising sense of loss when it isn't. A bench in the park. A corner in the coffee shop. A seat at the family dining table.

And it doesn't stop at places.

The feeling extends to people too — classmates, friends, cousins, teachers, anyone we like. A subtle, unspoken sense of mine. Not always possessive, not always conscious. But present. We feel a small sting when a close friend doesn't take our side in an argument, doesn't join a stroll, doesn't respond the way we'd hoped.

In its mildest form, this is harmless. A little attachment adds texture to everyday life — it gives us a sense of belonging.

But there is a line.

When that quiet sense of ownership hardens into possessiveness, when expectation curdles into entitlement, something shifts. A lost parking spot, a friend's small disappointment — and suddenly the reaction is out of proportion to the cause.

Eastern philosophy has a word for this: maya. In Hindu thought, it names the illusion that the world we perceive — and possess — is fixed and separate from us, when really nothing is truly ours. Everything passes through us as much as we pass through it. We are creatures who need to belong, even while nothing we cling to is permanently ours.

Complete detachment isn't how most of us live. It probably isn't how most of us can live.

So the goal, perhaps, isn't to eliminate attachment, but to notice the moment it begins to take hold.

That noticing might be enough.

No Shield Will Shield Forever

Responding to Friday Writings #234: Words for Images

This is inspired by my post from 2015: Peace - belief, pretence, gimmicks, et. al.

No Shield Will Shield Forever

One had to be strong.
More powerful than the rest.
A proud king... perhaps a fearless chief...

to command such an exquisite shield.
It may have shielded him many times.
Yet no shield will shield forever.

Even the finest shield is left behind.

Dreams and Mirrors

Written to the prompt Friday Writings #233: “set another goal … dream a new dream”

C.S. Lewis reminds us that we are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream. Yet age offers a companion that youth seldom values: discernment. A dream is not judged by its size alone, but by its fit. Wisdom lies not merely in dreaming, but in knowing which dreams deserve a place in our waking hours. A dreamer dreaming a dream must dream a dream that can become reality.

Dream, for dreams are worth the dream,

Yet dream the dream that fits the dream,

Not every dream is yours to dream.

Aim, but after knowing the archer well,

Target, only what is worth the target,

Not every arrow will find its mark.

Love, but weigh the love you love,

Want, but test the want you want,

Desire alone should not guide.

Spend, if spending serves the plan,

Invest, but learn before you invest,

Gold has buried many a dream.

Dream, for dreams renew the soul,

Yet dream with prudence at your side,

Dream those dreams that are part of soul.

A Mere 2,000 Readers a Month

 This is in response to Friday Writings #232: A Few of Her Favorite Things

I have put myself on a path to realizing a long-held dream: writing a book on a topic close to my heart—designing a hotel from everyone's perspective. To keep myself motivated, I have been sharing the journey as a book-in-progress on my other blog, A Slice of Art and Design.

Like most dreams worth pursuing, this one is not happening easily. I am fighting tooth and nail to make it happen.

Perhaps because I am immersed in the subject, I have started believing that everyone—including you—is secretly curious about how a hotel is designed and is a potential reader of my book.

As the manuscript slowly blooms, a different emotion has begun to surface—anxiety.

Not many people seem to be reading my work.

On some days, I become sad and grumpy. A mere 2,000 readers visit the blog each month. I find myself wondering whether the effort is worth it. Who am I writing for? Does anybody really care?

Then, on better days, I look at the same number differently.

Two thousand people.

I am incredibly fortunate that two thousand individuals choose to spend a few minutes reading something that originated as a thought in my mind.

Before the internet, those thoughts would probably have remained trapped in a diary. After I departed this planet, the diary itself might have been discarded by someone clearing a shelf-I hammer this idea into my own head.

Instead, those thoughts now travel farther than I ever imagined. Some may be forgotten. A few may be remembered. One or two might even inspire someone.

And perhaps that is reason enough to continue.

The book will arrive when it is ready. Until then, I will keep writing, keep sharing, and keep believing that everyone in this world is a little curious about hotel design.

If you happen to be one of them, I would be grateful if you became the bee on the bud of this book, carrying its link from flower to flower and helping it bloom.

There Comes a Time to Stop Blaming Your Past

I wonder at times if there comes a point in life when we need to stop blaming our past for our present circumstances.

Not because the past is unimportant.

Our upbringing, environment, education, opportunities, relationships, and experiences all leave their mark on us. Understanding them is always essential. Reflection helps us make sense of who we are, why we think the way we do, and how we arrived where we are today.

The problem is not looking back.

The problem begins when we continue to blame the past for today's results.

There is a subtle but important difference between saying:

"This happened to me."

and

"This is why I cannot move forward."

The first is an explanation. The second is an excuse.

At some point, our current situation belongs less to our past circumstances and more to our present choices. As adults, we gradually gain control over our decisions, habits, attitudes, relationships, and actions.

The responsibility slowly shifts.

Our past may explain where we started, but it cannot forever be held responsible for where we remain.

The Rear-View Mirror

"Life, like driving, requires a rear-view mirror."

A good driver checks it regularly. It provides awareness, context, and information. It reminds us that a difficult stretch of road is behind us and alerts us to what may still be following us.

The same is true in life.

Looking back helps us learn from mistakes, understand our motivations, and recognize patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.

The rear-view mirror is not the problem.

"But imagine blaming the rear-view mirror because you are not reaching your destination."

That would be absurd.

The mirror did not choose your direction. It merely showed you where you had been.

The same principle applies to our past.

There comes a time when constantly blaming our upbringing, environment, parents, education, luck, or past failures becomes less about understanding and more about avoiding responsibility.

The past may have influenced today's reality, but it does not get to make tomorrow's decisions.

Only we have that power.

Think About It

Many people spend years searching their past for answers. Sometimes they find them.

But answers alone do not change anything.

At some point, the more important question becomes:

"What am I going to do now?"

That is where responsibility begins, because the future is still waiting to be shaped.

The past is a reference point, not a place to live.

Visit it when you need perspective. Learn from it when it has something to teach.

But do not give it permanent authority over your future.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding your past is valuable; blaming it indefinitely is not.
• Reflection creates awareness, but responsibility creates change.
• Your upbringing and environment influence you, but they do not have to define your future.
• The rear-view mirror is useful for context, not direction.
• The question eventually changes from “Why did this happen?” to “What am I going to do about it?”

The HAIL Method: How to Use Julian Treasure’s Mantra for Authentic Interactions

Are you walking into rooms wondering why the vibe feels off—or why you aren’t being accepted warmly?

It’s a heavy feeling. You see a friend or peer welcomed with open arms, while your own entrance feels flat. In those moments, it is easy to blame the universe, office politics, or personal biases. But before you conclude that the world is being unfair, I want to share a gift with you that helped me navigate this very crossroads.

At the beginning, I carried an unspoken assumption—that it was my birthright to be accepted and greeted warmly in any company. Perhaps that came from growing up in a close circle of friends and familiar faces.

But in a new place, when I was no longer at the center, I felt invisible. I found myself wanting to quietly melt away into the background.

It took me time to realise that presence is not assumed—it is shaped by how we show up.

Years ago, I received this advice from a TED talk. It wasn't just a lesson; Julian Treasure delivered it like a mantra transferred from a guru to his disciple. It came down to one simple question I now ask myself:

Did I HAIL?

The response you receive from others is often a mirror of the energy you bring to the interaction. When we lead with sincerity, we create the space for warmth to return to us.

I’m not saying the other person is always right—they are not. I’ve experienced those moments many times where a handshake felt mechanical, as if it were just a box to tick. There are times when people ask how you are, yet their tone reveals a lack of sincerity.

But even then, this mantra reminds me: I can’t control how others show up—but I can choose how I do.

To change how people respond to you, I invite you to lead with these four pillars:

• H – Honesty: Are you being clear and straightforward?

• A – Authenticity: Are you showing up as yourself, or a version you think they want?

• I – Integrity: Are you someone who can be trusted from the first handshake?

• L – Love: Are you genuinely wishing them well?

When you lead with honesty and goodwill, the atmosphere shifts. Not always immediately, but enough to know the effort is never wasted. Because in the end, the question is not just how others receive us—it is how we choose to be, every single time we meet the world.

The Challenge:

In your next three interactions today—whether it’s at the supermarket, the park, a kitty party, or with your boss—consciously apply the HAIL method. Notice if the "warmth" in the room changes.

I’ve passed this mantra to you as it was once received by me. Which of these four pillars do you need to lean into most today?