So much has changed in the span of days.
Of all that unfolds around me, the one realm still within my command is my own mind—my response, my interior weather.
Vipassana meditation brings me back to that place of quiet authority. It teaches me to observe, to let thoughts arise and pass without grasping, to return again and again to stillness. I think often of S. N. Goenka, that gentle Burmese teacher who carried this ancient practice across borders and generations, offering it freely, without ornament or dogma.
It is Friday night.
Two candles are lit before me. As midnight approaches, they continue to burn steadily—no wind, no tremor, no flicker. The flame stands upright, composed, almost deliberate.
I take my blood pressure: 119/72.
A respectable number. I smile quietly. It feels less like a clinical reading and more like a reflection of the calm that has settled inside me—a small physiological confirmation that the mind, when steadied, speaks to the body.
And from this stillness, my thoughts travel eastward.
I send my love to my friends—and to all those I have loved and never met—in the land of Fārs. May they know peace in their hearts, even when peace feels distant in their streets. May calm find them in moments of fear, and dignity remain intact when circumstances conspire against it.
Tonight, from far away, I hold them in quiet remembrance.
A steady flame.
An unspoken longing.
And a wish—for peace, for patience, for a gentler dawn.
