Where is the current taking you?

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Ten years ago, a haircut and a crash reshaped my life.
One cost $50 and lasted an hour. The other cost my identity and took a decade to recover.
Both taught me the same truth: Life isn’t a spreadsheet of pros and cons. It’s a river—wild and patient, carving canyons from your cracks.
And the question you need to ponder is whether you'll keep fighting the current or let it carry you forward.

Serendipity: The Haircut That Wasn't About Hair

June 25, 2015. My first appointment at a new salon. Directly under the cramped CityPlace condo I called home.
The salon hummed like fresh hope and friendly vibes. The stylist, Jody, snipped and buzzed to the sound of a pulsing beat.
We joked and laughed. It was easy.
By the 10th visit, we were friends.
By the 30th I was falling in love.

I thought I'd gone to get a haircut. The universe had a different idea. It was giving a lesson in trust.
Jody's chair became a sanctuary where the clockwork grind of productivity stilled... we were two humans talking about music instead of money, gratitude instead of goals.

We spend so much energy chasing purpose, as if it's a finish line we're meant to sprint toward.
But what if the moments that define us aren't the ones we orchestrate, but the ones that stumble into us?
→ The missed flight that leads to a lifetime of friendship.
→ The typo in an email that sparks your best idea yet.
→ The book recommendation that shifts your world view.

These accidents aren't disruptions.
They're whispers from an invisible power better at plotting our joy than we are.

Pause and reflect for a minute...

What's the best thing that ever happened to you... by accident?

Detour: The Crash That Became a Compass

Months before that haircut, I left a job I loved. I had lost my way chasing a myth we’re fed to keep us rowing upstream.
I wore burnout like a badge—long work weeks, sleepless nights, and a body buzzing with cortisol and caffeine.
I used alcohol and shopping to fill the voids.
I avoided the truth to keep the peace.

Survival tactics turned into cages.

I crashed spectacularly. I lost everything.
When I realized what I'd become, my heart broke.

I used to think wrong turns were proof I'd failed at navigating life. Now I see them as proof life is navigating me.
The river doesn't drown you.
It drowns what no longer serves you.
Losing that job wasn't failure; it was the current scrubbing off the armour I'd mistaken for strength.

That heartbreak I thought would bury me? It unearthed a resilience I now wield like a compass.
The road we resist often becomes the road that remakes us.
Just as the Jody’s scissors trimmed my hair, the crash sheared away illusions, revealing the current beneath.

Pause and reflect for a minute...

Where did the wrong turn lead you right?

Insight: The Tools are Neutral. The Hands Aren't.

I nap. I hike. I meditate.
I say 'no' to anything that smells like hustle.
I coach founders building empires that don't cost souls.
I'm scaling an app that's a love letter to human connection in a world that monetizes loneliness.

The same current that swept me out of capitalism's scarcity mindset carried me to an award-winning film crew making a documentary about abundance, regeneration and equal distribution.
About people like you and me wielding capitalist tools with humanity's hands. The film's thesis?

The revolution isn't a fight. It's a flow.

I'm building a raft mid-current, plank by plank, with others who trust the river.

Capitalism screams, ‘Time is money!’
The river sings, ‘Time is trust.'

The app, the coaching, the film—they're not products. They're proof that the tools are neutral. It's the hands that matter.

This week, float these questions in your moments of quiet reflection:

• Where am I forcing the current instead of following it?
• What 'accident' is a clue for me to stop paddling upstream?
• What tiny act of trust—a 'no', a collaboration, a pause—could let the river flow?
  → Like my new friend Ryan who said 'no' to a toxic job... and refocused their energy to scale a new venture to promote happiness and wellbeing for all.

Ten years ago, I thought purpose was something you built. Now I know it's something you discover... something you surrender to... a current that's been here all along, patiently dissolving the dams we mistake for destiny.

Where is it taking you? I don’t know.
But I do know this: The river never abandons its own.
Let it carry you, my friend.

I’ll be floating beside you,
​
Zaheer

P.S. Want to share your 'current' story? Hit reply and hop on the raft with us.
​P.P.S. If you missed my letter from last week, read it here: What are you pretending not to know?​

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