The project we worked on for the past two months didn’t end well, and I’m still trying to make sense of what went wrong. It’s hard not to replay the mistakes and imagine what we could have done differently. While I wasn’t physically present during the two critical days when things unfolded, I was still part of the team. We invested time, effort, and a lot of energy into this project, and that makes the weight of it difficult to shake.
So here I am, at 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning, still sitting with the grief.
I keep circling back to the idea of reciprocity, how we expect effort to be met with outcome, energy with return. When that balance breaks, it leaves something unresolved. Nothing feels unfinished in terms of work, yet emotionally, the exchange feels incomplete, and I don’t quite know what to do with that yet.
Reciprocity assumes balance: effort in, outcome out. But human systems aren’t closed systems. You can put in energy, time, and care, and still receive something that doesn’t reflect that investment. I understand this intellectually, but the emotional imbalance still persists. I don’t have a resolution here. Just the awareness that when you give deeply, and the return comes back distorted, it leaves a quiet ache that takes time to settle.
You know the feeling when you give, and give, and give, believing that something will come back in return. It’s almost instinctive, as if our brains are wired to expect balance. But the truth is, we don’t get to control what comes back to us. And maybe that’s where I am right now, sitting with the very human disappointment of hopes and dreams that didn’t land where I thought they would.
Hm.
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