Nayla’s Notes on Life

Category: inspiration

  • Superhero Suit Not Included

    Superhero Suit Not Included

    If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice, what would it be?

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    “You need to grow a thicker skin,” she said with the confidence of someone who’s always been comfortable in hers.

    My eyes darted down to the darkest corner of the room and lingered.

    The pregnant pause in our exchange broke as Mom’s voice softened. “It’s a harsh world out there.”

    I drew my gaze back towards her, secretly hoping it would alter the usual trajectory of these uncomfortable childhood moments…

    You see, I’m someone who cries over cat food commercials, a tender scene in a sitcom, and a lonely snowflake on a winter morning.

    This has been a bit of a problem, because I come from people who survived by not feeling things out loud.

    Mom and Dad were displaced into the Western world as refugees.

    They lost their jobs, their possessions, their savings, and, most importantly, the place they called home. Mom brushes it off. “We were young…” she says, as her voice trails off into distant memories carefully tucked away.

    They rebuilt their lives from the contents of their suitcase: a couple of saris, a few toiletries, and a quiet hope that maybe it would all be okay again.

    “Not dwelling on things” was a survival strategy.

    One that I failed to inherit.

    As a child, I’d squeeze my eyes shut tight and try my best to will this so-called “thicker skin” into existence… like an Iron Man suit that shoots lasers and has a built-in snooze button for gory TV shows, large crowds, and cat food commercials.

    I never did grow that thicker skin.

    I just stopped criticizing myself for having the skin I have. It turns out most of the sting was from the second hit.

    I’m not sure I wish my younger self had known this though.

    Because sometimes I wonder…

    Perhaps my parents survived by not dwelling on things so that I could have the luxury of doing so.

  • Step One: Don’t Be Weird to the Aliens

    Step One: Don’t Be Weird to the Aliens

    If aliens arrived tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d ask them?

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    I’ve survived job interviews, blind dates, and one extremely tense potluck, but none of them prepared me for the pressure of greeting an alien.

    My first instinct was to ask “Why are you here?” It felt responsible. Firm. Very “Please fill out this customs form: business or pleasure?”

    But that question shows up with its arms crossed. Nobody’s ever felt welcome after being asked to state their intentions at the door.

    So I swung the other way, toward wonder: “What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen that humans can’t even imagine yet?” Lovely! Poetic! Also deeply presumptuous, because it assumes the aliens know what humans can imagine. I’d basically assigned a stranger homework on arrival.

    Eventually I landed on the one that felt right: “How can I make you feel welcome?” It’s kind. It’s humble. It’s what you say to a houseguest holding a suitcase.

    Then came the obvious snag… what if they’re hostile? I tried adding “…while keeping everyone safe,” which turned it into the world’s most polite hostage negotiation. Still, the idea held up. You can be warm without handing over the keys.

    And then I realized the bigger problem. Maybe leading with any question is the mistake. In some cultures, a barrage of questions at first meeting is rude. In others, it’s a sign you don’t know your place. For all I know, the aliens consider “Hi, what’s your deal?” a declaration of war.

    But alas, the exercise was to come up with a question… so my final answer is: “Welcome! How do introductions work where you’re from? We’d like to understand how you prefer to get to know others, and we’d be glad to share how we do this here on Earth.”

    It’s less “state your purpose” and more “take your time.”

    It asks how they like to meet people, and it offers to share how we do it here. A fair trade, a bit of curiosity… It’s giving “let’s both dip our toes in the water” energy (assuming they have toes).

    Of course, they could respond with silence. Or interpretive dance. Or, a pause followed by “You first.” If it’s the latter, I’ll be ready… I come from a long line of people who will let a casserole go cold rather than be the first one to serve themselves.

  • Torn Between a Safe Career and a Meaningful One

    Torn Between a Safe Career and a Meaningful One

    What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?

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    I had a five-year career plan. It lasted until a stack of brochures showed up.

    It was a gorgeous autumn day in Toronto. The leaves were showing off, turning bright shades of yellow, orange, and crimson red. The crisp air didn’t bother them like it bothered me. 

    I’d recently graduated from law school. Yet, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life… until that day. 

    Don’t get me wrong, law school opened many doors. But it was a career I fell into by default rather than design.

    I spent the better part of that fateful morning reviewing a series of pamphlets I had been asked to consolidate. I poured over each one, neatly stacking them on my desk as I finished. Most importantly, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. 

    They talked about conflict.

    Not the destructive kind that we see on social media and the news these days. You know what I’m talking about… the kind that makes you want to click, sigh, and type a comment you’ll regret by Thursday. 

    No, this was the “boring” kind of conflict: conflict resolution. 

    The kind where two people sit down together and have a true dialogue. Where communication means more than people saying “I hear you” and clearly not hearing a thing.

    Before you scroll on, let me also share that I used to hate conflict. (This was, in hindsight, a questionable foundation for a career built on disagreeing for a living, but I digress.)

    I had avoided confrontation my entire life.

    And yet there I was, captivated. Who were these people who called themselves peacemakers*? How had they learned to do what seemed like the hardest thing in the world: helping people who are fighting to work together?

    *Peacemaker: a person who sits between two people who each believe they’re the reasonable one, and somehow leaves with everyone still talking.

    As much as I tried to ignore what I was feeling, I couldn’t seem to shake the inner tug to dig deeper.

    It also made my shoulders tighten. 

    My career was finally shaping up, and the thought of throwing it all away felt irresponsible. The cautious part of me was terrified of failure. It had kept me safe for many years, like an umbrella I carried on perfectly sunny days. I never got wet. But I also never got to feel the sun. 

    I took a deep breath and Googled what it would be like to work in this area. The cautious one spoke up immediately:

    You’re nowhere near as qualified as they are.

    I haven’t applied for anything.

    Yet… That’s what worries me.

    This time another voice chimed in. It didn’t speak in words, but in sensations: a flash of excitement, deep fascination… and a mildly terrifying sense that my whole world was about to change.

    I now know that this was the curious part of me.

    Has this ever happened to you? The feeling of being pulled in two directions by different parts of yourself?

    On that beautiful autumn day, the curious one gained enough courage to put the umbrella down. It looked the cautious one deeply in the eyes: “It doesn’t matter what you think we’re supposed to do… we need to keep going.”

    I could feel the cautious one release its grip… almost as if it was waiting for someone to grab the steering wheel so it could finally step down for a while. My shoulders softened and just for a moment I stopped caring about mistakes, failure, or looking foolish. I simply felt the joy of wondering.

    The next day, I went to a bookstore and bought a book on conflict resolution. The cautious one wanted to be certain I was prepared, so one book became a stack, the stack became a shelf, and eventually the shelf became a career. 

    If you’re feeling torn, you may not have a decision to make so much as an internal meeting to chair. I recommend bringing patience, snacks, and low expectations for the first 30-minutes.

    I never did go back to the five-year plan. I hear it’s waiting for an apology. 

  • Nobody Panic, We’re All Someone Else Now

    Nobody Panic, We’re All Someone Else Now

    The genie grants you a wish. What is it?

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    So, one wish. Here it is: once a year, for one week, everyone on Earth swaps bodies with someone whose life looks nothing like theirs. 

    A long-haul trucker becomes a kindergarten teacher. A CEO becomes a line cook who gets home at 1am. A teenager becomes a 72-year-old retired farmer. A suburban Western mom wakes up as a market vendor in Marrakech, fluent in a language they’ve never studied, haggling like they were born for it. Think Freaky Friday,* but with eight billion people and no hair-and-makeup budget.

    *Freaky Friday: a cinematic scenario in which two people switch bodies, learn a life lesson in under 97 minutes, and are returned with their hair fully intact.

    There are three ground rules, and they apply to all of us.

    Rule one: it never happens during a bad time. If you’re caring for a sick loved one that week, you don’t swap. You stay right where you are, with them. 

    Rule two: nobody has to do anything that goes against their moral code. You’re borrowing a life, not auditioning to be a villain.

    Rule three: everyone gets all of their host’s memories. Nobody learns empathy while hunting for the cutlery drawer in a stranger’s kitchen.

    At the end of the week, we all go back to being ourselves. Just ourselves. We’d still overthink our emails, still have strong opinions about the thermostat, still say “no worries” when there are, in fact, several worries.

    But maybe we’d have a bit more compassion.

    Maybe we’d be a bit more understanding.

    Maybe we’d come home with new ideas about how to make the world a better place, because we’d have spent a week living in the part of it we’d only ever fleetingly wondered about. Multiply that by eight billion, and I like our odds.

    That’s the whole wish. No gold, no private island, just a planet’s worth of people who’ve each walked a week in shoes that don’t fit.

  • What’s the Funny Story from Today?

    What’s the Funny Story from Today?

    What are some life hacks that you practice?

    Journaling has always been the “the one that got away” for me. I’ve known of its benefits for ages: stress reduction, self-reflection, a healthier gut flora. But I was never able to find a way to make it work… until a few weeks ago.

    Every time I would start a journaling practice, it would fizzle out in no time like a bad high school crush. 

    I didn’t like writing in a journal. It’s ergonomically challenging to slouch and press down with your pen at this age. Not to mention the small voice that kept insisting: “Hey… me again… sooooooooo are we still really committed to this whole leaving our deepest darkest thoughts lying around thing?” 

    In an effort to get it to back off, I bought a cheap tablet that I kept on airplane mode. It took so long to fire up that all of my entries started with a rant about big tech. Alas, friction is the nemesis of healthy habits. 

    I was about to give up altogether when the instructor in one of my courses assigned us a daily writing practice: Reflect on your day and ask yourself, if you had to do a 2-minute standup comedy from the day, what story would you tell?

    This has hit the sweet spot for me. It feels like a joyful rubix cube for my brain to play with every evening. I don’t write anything fancy… one of my entries said nothing more than this:

    How we still make friends in the same way that kids do: OMG you like unicorns! I like unicorns!!! Wanna be best friends forever??? :) Just replace “unicorns” with whatever adulting rabbit hole you’re in at the moment (meditation, scrapbooking, colourcoded spreadsheets) and perhaps tone down the second sentence slightly.

    As for those moments when I do need somewhere to release intense emotions, existential spirals, or conspiracy theories about how my gut flora is plotting against me… I have one of those LCD writing tablets. Perfect for getting your frustrations out without leaving the evidence lying around.