I came across a quote today that felt like meeting an old friend again:
“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, can never return to its original dimensions.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I remember when my world began to stretch.
I was a child when my father got a job in Chad. He went first to settle in, and then we followed. We moved into a beautiful home with a yard. We had a security guard. A housemaid. A driver who took us to school and brought my father home after work. Life felt like something out of a movie—simple on the outside, but rich in new textures. We were in private schools, spending weekends at restaurants or watching films in theaters, and occasionally traveling to neighboring countries.
But the real shift didn’t come from the comfort. It came from the exposure.
My dad loved adventure. He was curious and spirited, and soon we were attending parties with people from all over the world—expats who told stories of places I hadn’t even dreamed of yet. I found myself inside gorgeous houses I’d only seen in movies. We dined in restaurants where most of the patrons were Westerners. I watched films that transported me into other lives, other countries, other realities.
And something in me shifted. My world stretched.
I began to realize while our life in Chad was good—better, even, than many of our relatives back home—there were other lives. Bigger ones. Bolder ones. Not just richer in money, but in experience, in possibility. And I understood, without anyone saying it outright, that there is always another level.
This wasn’t about greed. It wasn’t about wanting more for the sake of more. It was about witnessing a world I never knew existed… and hearing something deep in my soul whisper, “This is so us.”
You don’t forget moments like that.
You don’t go back to thinking small after that.
That’s what happens when your mind stretches. When your worldview expands. When you realize the limits, you believed in were never real—they were just familiar.
And once you stretch…
You don’t shrink.
Lately, I feel a sense of urgency—like time is picking up speed, like age is gently reminding me that life doesn’t wait. As I wrote this, I felt a wave of nostalgia for that younger version of myself—the girl whose eyes were just beginning to open. Who had just started to notice that beyond what some societies show you, there’s a curtain. A soft but heavy veil between you and the rest of the world.
And if no one tells you it’s there, you might spend your whole life behind it. Never knowing it’s just fabric. Never knowing you could pull it back.
But once you do—once you start peeling it away—the world appears. A bigger, brighter, wilder world. With more possibilities, more joy, more versions of you waiting to be discovered.
So yes, sometimes I feel sad. Sad for the time I didn’t know. Sad for the moments I’ve forgotten to stretch. But I refuse to stay in that sadness.
I want to live. Fully, loudly, freely.
And whenever I feel stuck, I will remember:
It’s not that I’m stuck.
It’s just that the curtains have been drawn again.
And my only job is to pull them open.
Because I am dying to see the world.
To be one with the world.
And to live like the girl I once was—and still am—whose soul whispered, “This is so us.”
Salima
Just me thinking out loud over here