Mira didn’t tell anyone where she was going.
She shut off teams, turned her phone to airplane mode, and booked a three-day retreat in “Chikmangalur”
-> a place she remembered only as green and quiet. She packed a notebook, a bottle of eucalyptus oil, and a heartbreak from who she thought to be the love of her life.
This vacation or retreat was simple.
No Wi-Fi, no yoga schedule, no group therapy.
Just a hillside homestay with wooden floors and the smell of cardamom in the air.
The host, Latha Aunty, didn’t ask questions. Every morning, she brought Mira two things: tea and time.
Mira accepted both.
The second day after Mira reached there, she felt to move, to trigger her motion, so she wandered into the forest behind the homestay. The trail was thin and earthy, moss clinging to rocks like old promises.
That’s when she saw it: a spiderweb stretching between two branches. A near perfect geometry.
And at its center, a spider, still.
Watching and waiting.
Mira stepped closer, but the spider didn’t move a muscle and the web’s geometry remained intact ready to catch her into it.
“Stay“, she thought.
Even though it knew she was coming. Even though the breeze could shatter it. It still stayed. Maybe it was just blind belief but the web as fragile as it was, was still home and comfortable.
Still there was possibility to do what it was created for.
Was that what she was doing? Staying in her job, her apartment, her routines, not because they were good, but because they were just known to her?
She sat for a while near the web, watching it holding strong through wind and water.
Later that afternoon, she climbed toward the coffee estate nearby. The leaves rustled in crisp layers beneath her shoes. On the edge of a clearing, she found a fallen tree, its roots split like open fingers.
It had given up the vertical life. But in its collapse, small green things had begun to grow on its bark: moss, tiny sprouts..
“Quit“, she thought.
not as a failure but as a compost, or as a room for others.
To quit, sometimes, wasn’t destruction. It was a soft release. From pretending, from proving and from the brittle pridefulness that came at the cost of a soft breath.
She ran her fingers over the bark. It looked like old expectations.
The next morning, she hiked alone to a cliff she had only seen on a wallpaper once.
The valley below was still hidden in fog.
She stood there, wind in her ears, heart thudding from the climb.
Then she saw it: a hawk cutting through the mist, wings wide, gliding swift. For a moment, it vanished completely, swallowed by cloud, and reappeared again like a new idea.
“Escape“, she thought.
To disappear, even briefly. To leave everything behind. The hawk didn’t carry anything, it just trusted the air.
But if she flew, would she find ground again? or would she keep circling?
That evening, Mira sat on the porch, notebook open, words pouring slower than thoughts.
Stay, Quit or Escape.
Each one had appeared to her in the forest.
Each one carried a truth, but all were at a cost.
Then she wrote a fourth word:
Begin.
And underneath it:
Begin again, from here.
Not because she had all the answers. But because now she had seen what staying looked like, what quitting made room for, what escape whispered.
Back in the city, her inbox overflowed. Her ex had messaged, politely. Her colleagues were already chasing deadlines.
But there was a sense of relief and calmness in her.
She took a breath. Booked a therapy slot. Marked her weekends as sacred. Reached out to one person she missed to acknowledge every week.
The fog hadn’t cleared. But it no longer felt like a cage.
Sometimes, the way forward isn’t about choosing one version of your life.
It’s about stepping off the loop and letting nature speak for you.
The events that led to me writing this story : https://ajayan.substack.com/p/choosing-your-optimal-outcome?r=36ippk