A Letter from Zaheer The Birthday of No One ↓ Friday was my birthday. America’s birthday too.Both equally made up. Celebrations of images that never stay still. Nostalgic handcuffs. Historic illusions. Imaginary lines. The past needs releasing. Because what we call memory is mostly a story kept alive by repetition: images, ideas, names, nations, narratives. And birthdays? One of the most powerful anchors of identity. We light candles for someone who was never born.Sing songs to a story that...

A Letter from Zaheer Nothing to become. Just be ↓ I used to think the work was to become. A better man.A kinder partner.A more successful version of me. But now I see: that story was never real.And the chase was never mine. Becoming was always a detour from being. ⸻ This weekend, my parents celebrate fifty years of marriage.And the city celebrates Pride. My parents first visited Toronto in 1977, a city still finding its shape. Nearly 50 years later, its skyline has transformed... but the...

A Letter from Zaheer You’re not broken. You’re being broken. ↓ You are not broken. You are being broken. By a culture that profits from your doubt. There's a big difference. You're being led to feel lack and need... by an entire culture built to sell you back to yourself. A better you. A happier you.A more optimized, upgraded, more loveable version of you.The idealized self.Someday in the future.With enough work. And the cost?Let's come back to that in a bit. ⸻ You were taught to chase.But...

A Letter from Zaheer Hold the mirror. Not the ache. ↓ Today is Father’s Day here in Canada. And like many days that carry emotional weight, it stirs up more than celebration. It brings reflection. Sometimes with a little ache. Always with grace.Here's what came up for me today. He doesn't need to prove strength. Or protect. Or perform. He just is. I took this photo in Botswana in 2020. The lion had just woken up from slumber in the hot afternoon sun. I didn’t come into this world aching for a...

A Letter from Zaheer Nothing needs fixing. Especially not you. ↓ If nothing needs fixing, then what am I here for? An elephant at ease... not broken, not fixing... just being. I took this picture from our boat on the Chobe River in Botswana. We’ve been trained to scan for problems.In ourselves.In others.In the world. A constant loop:What’s wrong?How do I fix it? We call it growth.We call it responsibility.But it's just the veneer we applyto mask our intuitive sense of misalignment. ⸻ From the...

A Letter from Zaheer You’re not a piece... You’re the whole. ↓ Take a single sheet of printed cardboard. Now imagine cutting it into a thousand pieces. Suddenly, a puzzle appears.Edges. Shapes. Separation.And with it, a problem to solve. But in truth, it is quietly whole.Nothing broken.Only outlined. Only imagined. The picture was always intact.The image never changed...Only your attention did. Wholeness beneath the illusion of separation. A view of the Sea Lion rock formation at Sleeping...

A Letter from Zaheer There Was Never a You ↓ There was never a you. Only the echo of attention, curving back on itself and mistaking the loop for a person. Like a microphone placed too close to a speaker, awareness feeds itself into itself, until the clean signal of being becomes a howl of identity. We hear the noise and call it “me.”But it was never personal. Just feedback. Just distortion.Just the sound of source, caught in a loop. And even that loop?It’s seen. Already. Silently.By...

A Letter from Zaheer You think you have time ↓ You think you have time.But you don’t know when this body will fall away. And yet we act like there will always be a better moment... to finally return to ourselves. ⸻ A friend of mine died this week.We worked together over a decade ago — back when urgency meant timelines, targets, tech launches. He was part of a transformation we delivered together.Smart. Kind. Quietly capable. He found his way back into my life last year through something I’d...

A Letter from Zaheer You're not behind... You're listening. ↓ Today is Mother’s Day in Canada where we live. And before anything else, I want to name this: Mothers, in all their forms, are the reason we’re here.Biological or chosen. Present or distant.Fierce or tender. They are the first rhythm we ever knew.The first warmth. The first disruption. The first grace.They shape our worlds… and the stories we tell about who we are. And one of the deepest stories they give us is the idea of what it...

A Letter from Zaheer You're not a project. ↓ You don’t need to heal to be whole.You just need to stop chasing the one who needs healing. Because what’s broken was never you... just your idea of you that you've been carrying, like a backpack of heavy rocks. ⸻ There’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.No finish line called “enlightened.”No future version of you finally worthy of peace. That’s the quiet trick of the healing spiral...it keeps you orbiting a self that doesn’t exist. ⸻ I’ve...