🐥The Paradox of Now #11

Like Attracts Like

Hi to all the newbies—and a casual “yeah yeah, you know the drill” to the regulars.

(Just kidding. I love you all equally. Mostly.)

This weekend reminded me of something special: when you show up as your weird, wonderful self, you attract the best kind of people.

A beautiful birthday bash in Tassy proved that—good vibes, great friends, and zero pretence.

A beautiful bunch of fun loving weirdos all congregating in one area.

What’s there not to love?

Naturally, I leaned into the chaos and hosted a full Easter egg hunt in the garden.

Weird clues. Total nonsense. Massive success.

No one remembers nOrMaL.

And if you read last week’s newsletter—yes, this is your ‘Easter egg’.

Literally.

Now let me give you a taste of what's coming:

🐥The book I read every night without fail

🐥A word that rhymes with ‘ponder’ that will make you ponder

🐥What’s with all the pistachio shells?

🥚Eggstra News🥚

Your weekly dose of some fascinating and fun finds:

📖Daily Stoic – I read this every day without fail. Stoicism has genuinely changed my life. Two years in, still journaling daily. Nothing grounds me more.

🧠Naval Ravikant – Three hours of mind-blowing insight. Just take one idea—it’ll stick. I keep coming back to it. He just gets it.

😂My Dad Wrote a Porno – Not all deep stuff here. This is pure nonsense and makes me laugh out loud. Weirdly addictive.

The Paradox of Now

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A Bus Full of Sonder

At lunch the other day, I sat in the same park as I usually do. No headphones. No distractions.

Just watching.

Just listening.

As people passed me by, I captured a single thing each one said, adding it to my notes.

They’ll never know their words ended up here—but they will always live here now, etched into a poem of fragments, forming one strangely complete picture of the human experience.

There was something about listening like that, really listening, that made me think about how much we all carry. How close we really are to one another, even in our silence.

Later that evening, still in that reflective space, I shared something I’d written with a friend—something personal, something about grief, about life, about becoming.

As I looked up halfway through, she had tears in her eyes. The story wasn’t hers, not directly.

But it still touched her.

Because somewhere in the complexity of someone else’s story, she saw her own reflection.

We are all living out our own little universes. Tangled webs of wants, wounds and worries.

And yet…

We all cry at the same scenes in a movie.

(Unless it is your New Year’s Resolution not to watch a movie)

We all need to put the book down when the words get too heavy.

We all stare out at the same sunsets and feel it stir something ancient inside us.

This is SONDER.

The quiet, profound realisation that everyone around you is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Full of their own joys, heartbreaks, grocery lists, unread messages, and almost-remembered dreams.

And when you really sit with that, when you let it shift something inside you, it doesn’t just make you softer. It can make you stronger too.

That’s where Stoicism comes in.

Not the stiff-upper-lip kind. Not the emotionless kind.

But the ancient philosophy that teaches us to look inward for peace, to focus only on what we can control, and to live with intention, not reaction.

It’s something I read and practice every day.

And this is a line I read recently from the Daily Stoic that resonated with these ideas:

He didn’t mean to beat yourself up.

He meant: don’t waste time wondering why people didn’t reply to your message.

Why they didn’t love you the way you wanted.

Why they didn’t say thank you as you held the door open for them.

It’s easy to take it personally—but most people aren’t doing anything to you. They’re just trying to survive their own mess.

Even the kind ones.

Even the ones who love you.

Especially them.

You are not the centre of their story. And they are not the centre of yours.

That’s not rejection. That’s reality. And within that reality is freedom. Once you see this, the landscape begins to shift further.

You stop expecting people to be perfect.

You stop needing them to show up in ways they might not yet know how to.

You start seeing everyone as a work-in-progress.

A best friend once said something about our parents that landed with me and hasn’t left since:

And it’s true.

Even the people who look as though they have it together are making it up as they go.

I see it in my brother and his wife, raising their daughter with so much intention.

Play, fun, affection, discipline and laughter. All while navigating their own complexities, still figuring out who they are.

Be patient with people.

Be disciplined with yourself.

Explore your inner world like a sculptor chiselling away at his marble block. Not to perfect it, but to reveal something honest beneath it.

You may never finish the work.

But the marble block will remain for others to chisel away too.

In this life you’ll die with unread messages and a half-done to-do list.

But isn’t that strangely beautiful?

The pursuit is the poetry.

The pursuit is the daily chiselling away.

So choose your sculpting tools wisely.

Choose to have agency over your own complex web.

And act like the skilled artisan that you know that you are.

That you know that you are capable of becoming.

One who is dextrous and intricate when needed, but powerful and deliberate when necessary.

Choose your sonder.

And never forget: even a National Express bus, filled with tired strangers and a broken toilet, can be a library of lives waiting to be understood.

It is sat on this hot and stuffy bus that I wrote the first draft of this main body in my notes app.

As just one passenger, on a bus full of sonder.

🐥 Haiku’s Haiku 🐥

Look how bright and beautiful Haiku, the river, and the sky are in today’s photo.

Haiku’s still riffing away with his 5-7-5s, doing his best.

They’re getting easier each week, but not necessarily better though.

We leave that decision up to you!

🌴 Palm Tree Euphoria 🌴

A friend once told me you always find pistachio shells in the strangest places. Ever since, I’ve seen them everywhere.

Last weekend this is what I was greeted by.

Balanced perfectly on the edge of a bin.

Not weird to see them in a bin, sure—but the perch felt oddly poetic.

This, my dashing ducks, is the:

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

When you notice something once, and then suddenly it’s everywhere.

Not magic, but your brain tuning in.

Let me know, so I can start seeing it too.

P.S. if this weeks’ flavour of newsletter helped you, forward it to a fellow duckling you care about. Word of beak is how we help improve our small corner of the world.

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See you dashing ducks over there! 🐥