This morning, I made a quiet, radical choice.
I didn’t go to the lecture I had been looking forward to—one held by my favorite professor.
Instead, I went to visit my father.
It was his second time seeing us since the surgery.
Still fragile. Still in process.
But this time, he smiled.
I went with my sister.
We didn’t say anything groundbreaking.
We didn’t fix anything.
We simply showed up.
With raspberries and strawberries!
Three bodies in a room. A little slower. A little softer. A little more real.
These are the moments that won’t ever make it into my CV,
but they are the ones that shape the kind of person I want to become.
Yes, I missed the lecture.
But I didn’t miss the moment.
Later, back at my desk, I returned to the lists.
To-dos. Receipts. Administrative loops that needed closing.
The weight of unsexy work.
But the morning had shifted something in me.
I moved through the tasks more gently.
With less resentment.
That evening, I sat down and opened a fresh page in my notebook.
My university.
Not a place that exists yet. But one that wants to.
I started drafting again—names, questions, teaching forms that hold space for healing as much as for rigor.
For paradox. For presence. For depth.
And in between the lines I wrote,
I saw my father’s face again.
How his presence had changed.
How mine had, too.
Healing is not always loud.
Sometimes it just looks like showing up.
Choosing the quiet path.
Missing a lecture to witness something else growing.
Today reminded me:
There’s a kind of learning that only happens in love.