Reflections
I do not remember exactly whereIfirst learned the sentence “worry about it later”. but over time, it revealed itself as something deeper than advice. it describes a mental mechanism that works almost automatically in my mind. a form of being selectively ignorant about certain things, not because they do not matter, but because they do not matter now.
Either at work or in daily life, car horns for no reason. someone dragging their feet without lifting them. cutting a public service queue. leaving clothes in the gym changing room instead of the locker. a bank agent typing five words per minute. an uber driver talking on the phone. someone playing a video on the metro without headphones.
I remember that particular day. I was heading to the University Of Khartoum. I took the city train. I was standing. there were no seats left. my head was facing the floor, and the train was moving. I was just there.
sometimes distance doesn’t change how much you know someone.
It only changes how helpless you feel watching them from afar.
At the start of the year, I had to catch up with a team I’m part of. we wanted to escape the dull rhythm of formal meetings and genuinely check in on how everyone had lived through 2025.I asked a simple question:
I used to lament having no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.
When I was a kid, my elder brother Mohammed used to work in many charity organizations . I used to be part of many of the events these charities were about. I saw the suffering of kids who were at the same age as me, many of whom had no father, no mother, no home to return to.
Oh, it always looked like you never cared about anything. just you and your computer.
Recently, I was in a meeting, and after the official hours ended, members usually stayed to catch up and chat a bit. one girl came up with a random question. It was something like: what is something a stranger has told you that stuck with you? It wasn’t too long until that moment that I realized I actually had one.
I have been flooded by all sorts of unexplainable emotions these days, and I feel the need to log this one, to sit with it and give it shape. anger is not something I am familiar with. it is an emotion I rarely felt throughout my life. but when I finally cast light on what had been controlling my behavior for so long, when I started seeing my past clearly, I felt angry.
Today, I spent five hours talking to Awab.
It wasn’t planned. no intention, no emotional preparation. he texted me casually saying: “VC in 2–3 hours?” the kind of message you expect to lead to small updates and shallow catching up as we usually do. Instead,it became one of the most profound conversations I’ve ever had.