Because of

I met Hossein when something in me had already begun to move.

I suspected that parts of my life no longer fit, but I was not ready to say it, even to myself. Our conversations, about life and about what we want when no one is listening, made it easier to hear. Small, private wishes I had kept to myself began to feel like they mattered. Not because they were practical, but because they were real, and they were mine.

Some people give answers. He helped me hear my own.

I came to John to learn, and learned more than I came for.

He shared his way of seeing the world and what a long life had taught him. Through it, he showed me something I thought existed only in stories: simple human trust, given without a strong reason. The wish to help, to teach, to push, and to notice a fire in someone before it is strong enough to survive on its own.

His advice has stayed with me. We are rarely ready, and we almost never know enough. We begin because the process asks something of us.

“You are full of ambition and capabilities you don’t realize yourself.”

It was said once, long before any of this.

When I heard it, I did not believe it. It took me years to understand what it was asking of me. Sometimes a sentence opens a new world, and after that it means the world to you_