This is the 50th TSE essay I’ve written in the past year.
It began quietly. A single essay shared on a quiet Sunday, written more out of necessity than strategy. At the time, I didn’t think of it as a series. I didn’t imagine a rhythm. I was just trying to make sense of something I couldn’t yet name – an ache I couldn’t file away in a spreadsheet or solve with a new project. But week after week, I kept returning to the page. Not for answers, but for motion. Not for an audience, but for alignment.
Fifty essays later, I’m still writing.
And if this one feels a bit heavy, it’s because the world does, too.
It’s not just the layoffs – though those alone are enough to shake a person. It’s the way they’ve become ordinary. A LinkedIn post, a calendar invite, a box of belongings packed a little too quickly. Friends I once saw lead rooms with quiet authority now speak in a different tone, as if trying to shrink their presence until the next opportunity arrives. The silence between emails feels louder now. Confidence takes longer to access.
Just last week, a former colleague asked to meet for coffee. Fourteen years at the same company. Two promotions. Countless hours poured into building teams and holding steady through mergers and leadership changes. She isn’t naïve – she knows business is business – but something in her expression told me this particular ending had cracked something deeper.
She stirred her coffee longer than necessary, tracing circles as if searching for a version of herself that hadn’t been interrupted. “I thought I had time,” she said. Not angrily. Not dramatically. Just honestly. Like someone who’d followed the rules and was still asked to leave the game.
We sat in silence for a while, not because we didn’t know what to say, but because neither of us wanted to rush past what she’d just admitted. There’s something sacred in not filling the pause.
I’ve seen that look before. Years ago, it was on my father’s face.
He had spent his entire working life with Indian Railways. For thirty-eight years, he woke up with purpose and predictability. His suit and the waiting office car or jeep meant something. His schedule meant something. He was a man people relied on. A railway man, sure – but also a family man, a community man, someone who understood his place in the world.
And then one day, the trains kept running, but no longer needed him to be on the job.
There was no grand farewell, just a morning like any other – except he didn’t reach for his briefcase. Instead, he hung his suits carefully, slid them to the side of the cupboard, and walked into the living room like a guest. My mother offered him tea without comment, and for the first time in my memory, the house felt unsure of itself. Like it, too, was adjusting to a new rhythm.
For weeks, he drifted. Not in a tragic way – just in a way that made clear how much of him had been organized around the job. The newspaper got more attention. The kitchen clock seemed louder. He began fixing things that didn’t need fixing, as if restoring broken hinges and flickering bulbs could fill the space left by a schedule that no longer called his name.
But something shifted – not all at once, but gradually. He started walking to the market again. Wrote and connected with friends he hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. Stopped to speak with the neighbors and their kids, who reminded him of his grandchildren halfway around the world. Nothing about it looked like a comeback. There was no reinvention, no second act headline. Just a quiet return to being useful. Present. Alive in the ordinary.
It reminded me, then and now, that recovery often begins with repair – not with the world, but with ourselves.
That memory came rushing back when I spoke with a young woman I mentor. She graduated at the top of her class, full of promise and potential, but now finds herself stuck in a limbo of unanswered applications and interviews that seem promising until they aren’t. She wasn’t asking for connections or advice. She was asking a harder question: “Is something wrong with me?”
She’s not the only one. I’ve heard versions of that same question from so many corners – recent grads, mid-career professionals, seasoned leaders. They don’t always say it out loud, but I can hear it in the way their voices trail off, in the way they apologize for updates that don’t involve promotions or launches or milestones.
What I told her, and what I keep reminding myself, is that we’re living in a moment of profound disorientation. The ladders we relied upon have shifted. The rungs are missing, or rearranged, or made invisible altogether. But that doesn’t mean we’re lost. It just means we have to find different ways to climb – ways that aren’t always linear, or polished, or Instagram-ready.
When I was between roles years ago, what helped me wasn’t the perfect next job – it was momentum. I started writing again. I reached out to people I respected without asking for anything. I listened more than I spoke. I said yes to things that didn’t make perfect sense on paper but helped me feel useful again.
And slowly, I began to trust myself again – not because the world validated me, but because I remembered what it felt like to move toward something, even when the destination was unclear.
What I’m seeing now – what gives me hope – is that the path forward is not just theoretical. It’s happening, often in ways that don’t announce themselves.
A friend who lost his job last year now runs a small meal delivery service for elderly neighbors. It doesn’t scale. It doesn’t need to. It lets him cook, and serve, and feel part of something again.
A former executive is tutoring math on the side while figuring out his next professional step. He says the clarity of teaching integers to eighth graders has reminded him of what real feedback looks like.
None of these stories will go viral. But they are the quiet foundations of recovery.
Because when you strip away the titles and the tools and the timelines, what remains is this: people still want to contribute. Still want to be seen. Still want to matter.
And that’s where leadership begins again – not always in big decisions, but in small invitations to move forward anyway.
So if you’re in a moment of stillness, know this: you are not broken. You are simply between chapters.
And if you’re in a position to help – through hiring, mentoring, listening, sharing – you don’t need a grand strategy. You just need to reach out. One honest conversation can do more than a thousand optimizations.
Leadership right now doesn’t look like certainty. It looks like humility. It looks like remembering someone’s name in a room where no one else does. It looks like asking, “How are you really?” and staying for the full answer.
And if you’re not sure what to do next, start small. Show up for one person. Return one favor. Tell one true story. You’d be surprised how quickly momentum begins to gather once you stop trying to impress and start trying to connect.
These 50 TSE essays began as an experiment. Then they became a discipline. And somewhere along the way, it turned into a form of service – not because I had all the answers, but because I was willing to sit with the questions.
Something new is coming soon. A way to carry this spirit forward – not just in essays, but in how we lead, live, and learn alongside one another. Personal and professional. Head and heart. Strategy and soul.
I am so excited to share all with you soon!
Until then—
Enjoy your loved ones and the rest of your Sunday.
And thank you for spending some of it with me.
Your comments, feedback and ideas on Substack are most welcome. Please take a moment and share your generosity.
Warm regards,
Adi