the effort that changes everything | musing no. 47

it’s not about grand gestures. it’s about paying enough attention to care.

i haven’t been dating since dabatha.

partly because i’ve been building this project, partly because the kids went back to school, and mainly because i just needed to breathe again.

to learn. to heal. to sit in the quiet long enough to hear myself think.

a couple i’m close with — he’s one of my best friends, and she’s one of those rare women who’s both kind and fierce — have been nudging me for months to meet one of her friends.

a doctor.

beautiful. brilliant. grounded.

i kept saying no. i wasn’t ready. i didn’t want to risk leaving a bad impression, especially because of how close they all are.

but after a while, i realized it was time. it was okay to meet someone new.

maybe it was time to see if i could find my daphne.

she grew up in a family of immigrants. the first doctor in her lineage. her parents and grandparents worked for years so she could graduate without debt, and she honored that by becoming someone they could be proud of.

when one of her family members got sick, she moved back home to help care for them — even though it meant leaving the city, the hospital, the big life she’d built.

her ex didn’t see that as noble.

i did.

because to me, that said everything: humility, empathy, loyalty. she puts people before herself.

when we finally met, she was even more incredible than i’d imagined.

there’s this quiet confidence about her — the kind that doesn’t perform for anyone.

she’s soft-spoken but deliberate. elegant, but not trying. beautiful.

and you can feel the fire underneath it all.

she’s inevitable. she doesn’t ask for permission. she just *is.*

the night we went out, we talked until 2am. she mentioned how disciplined she is about her health — workouts, sleep, nutrition. she overslept and texted me that she was all bummed out because she missed her normal breakfast routine before work, but reassured me it was so worth it.

so i did something small.

nothing major.

i remembered where she said she likes to go for breakfast — her favorite spot, three blocks from my lawyer’s office — and i stopped by on my way to a meeting.

i grabbed her usual order. walked into her office.

told the receptionist, “hey, can you tell the doctor you think someone might’ve bumped her car out in the lot? just tell her to check it quick.”

the receptionist froze, looked at me. i said, “she’s having a rough morning. i brought her breakfast.”

and her whole face changed — she got up, smiling, and went to get the doc.

a minute later, she comes around the corner, worried, scanning the parking lot — and then she sees me, standing there with her breakfast in hand.

the look on her face made every bit of it worth it.

twenty-five dollars.

thirty minutes of my day.

but it changed the whole trajectory of hers.

that’s what effort really is.

not grand gestures. not noise.

just paying enough attention to care.

— author

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