I'm not going to pretend I have anything smart to say about what's happening in this region right now. I don't. Nobody really does and I'd argue anyone who sounds very certain about how this plays out is either braver or less informed than me.

The diplomatic and political corridors of all of this are so far above my pay grade that I've genuinely stopped trying to decode them. What I do have something to say about is this: how do you function when something is completely out of your control and also completely terrifying?

Because that's the actual question most of us have been sitting with this week. For me, the answer looked embarrassingly ordinary. I went to the office every day. I played padel. Twice, actually (#winning). I had my almond milk flat white the way I normally do, at roughly the same time. I took every precaution I reasonably could, and then I made a decision with my anxious heart and overworked brain to not let what I couldn't control eat the parts of my life that were still intact and still mine.

Not because I wasn't scared. I was. I think most people around me were too, even the ones not saying it out loud. Fear and anxiety in moments like this aren't weakness; they're just us being human. But I've also learned (about myself specifically) that dwelling doesn't protect me. It just costs me the present moment without giving me anything useful in return.

COVID. Very different circumstances, I know — completely different in scale, in nature, in what it asked of us.

But somewhere in the human behaviour underneath it, not so different at all. That same mounting fear in the early days. That same helpless scrolling. And then eventually, the same quiet shift: okay, I can't control this. What can I control?

And then just: one day at a time. One coffee. One workout. One normal thing after another until normal starts to feel possible again.

I don't know how the coming weeks look. I don't think any of us do. But I do know that the version of me that goes to work, moves her body, drinks her coffee, and calls the people she loves is more useful than the version paralysed by what she can't understand or change. So that's the version I'm choosing. Again.

Circumstances change. Human behaviour, not so much.

M.

PS: Know someone who's been white-knuckling their way through this week? Send them this.

xx

Manuja

Not for everyone. Never was.