What happens when you loosen the grip,
But don’t step away from your life?
I carried that question with me, quietly.
Because in Pushkar, nothing felt like an escape.
Life continued in simple ways.
People worked.
Conversations happened.
Tea was poured.
Time moved unbothered by intention.
And somewhere in that ordinariness, I noticed something shift.
I wasn’t avoiding my life.
I was standing beside it.
There was no urge to reinvent myself.
No pressure to return with clarity or conclusions.
Just moments of being present
without needing to extract value from them.
We’re used to breaks being productive.
Healing.
Transformational.
But this one wasn’t.
It was quiet.
Unremarkable.
And because of that, honest.
Pushkar didn’t offer distance.
It offered proximity
to people,
to pace,
to oneself.
And when I returned, nothing had changed.
Except this:
I was no longer trying to escape my life.
I was simply living it with a looser grip.