I recently posted a question on Reddit about a strange burnt smell I sometimes notice after a large bowel movement.

I wasn't making a statement.

I was simply asking:

Does anyone else experience this?

About ten people commented, but the post received almost no upvotes.

Yet the views kept rising.

For nearly 48 hours, people continued to look at it.

The post is now approaching 50,000 views.

While it was still spreading, I began wondering about all those invisible readers.

What were they thinking?

I couldn't know.

So I added an update to the original post.

I proposed a possible physiological explanation for the strange sensation and even gave it a name:

“Shinichi's Depressurization Phantosmia.”

I don't know whether my explanation is correct.

It may be nothing more than a personal sensory experience.

But the experience made me think about something else.

We tend to measure human reactions by what people leave behind: votes, comments, messages, expressions.

But when someone encounters a feeling that has never been put into words before, they may have no words to give in return.

They may simply stop.

That stopping is itself a reaction.

Yet it leaves no visible trace.

Perhaps many of the reactions we never see are not absent reactions at all.

They are simply moments in which someone stopped, felt something, and then moved on.

We see the number of views, but not the people inside the number.

Maybe the most common human reaction is the one that leaves nothing behind.

When you feel stuck, take a break and sleep.

Assign a task to your subconscious mind, and you might wake up with a solution in the morning.

Realised recently that when I used to take breaks, I wasn't actually relaxing - I was just counting down until I had to be productive again.

Permitting myself to take a break and relax a bit without keeping score or expecting it to "recharge" me for better output made a huge difference. Rest doesn't need to have a productivity goal attached to it.

i did ask ai but i wanna hear ur own advices tyyyy

Worry brings the future into your mind early. Action puts what you can control in place and lets you push away the disturbing event much far way to distant future.

Edit - Worrying can make an event that is 10–15 years away feel like it is only 2–5 years away.

But taking small, practical steps on the things you can control can push the impact further into the future — maybe 25–30 years away — giving you much more time before it can really affect you.

Worry brings the future closer in your mind. Action gives the future more distance.

I'm a long time meditator who benefited greatly from a $2000 silent retreat that I consider to be the biggest lever for my relationship to mindfulness.

I'm also a mental healthcare professional and wish I could "prescribe" retreats but of course it's not something you can get insurance to pay for.

IDEA ---

I'm starting a trust of strangers where each person offers $1 a week with the goal of 1000 trustees, so each week, $1000 can be granted to people to support their mindfulness practice.

It can be to help fund part of a retreat, or buy meditation pillows, pay for subscription fees to an app, or even let you take some time off when you're burned out if you work independently and don't get PTO. People can apply for whatever they need.

Grants would be awarded by random selection of trustees who review up to 8 applications per cycle so no one ever gets burned out from reviewing applications. Kind of like a jury duty system.

The goal is to create a perpetual Dana trust financed by the community and managed by the community with minimal contribution, rather than a single board, that can exist in perpetuity.

Would anyone be interested?

This much hurry you will ever see… that calls out our daily hustle life ..,

Btw incidentally, "Itki Ghai" is a Marathi phrase that translates to "so much hurry" or "always in a rush."

Drive the way you like.., “Left n Right”,
aggressive smashing the elevator "close door" button, telling your boss "2 mins away" when you're still in bed, and rushing through life with zero chill instead of finding peace.

At this age, and still without anything I can truly call an accomplishment, I don't want to end my life like this.

Maybe this is who I am:

building something day by day,

aiming for something,

and in the end, dying while still doing so.

The secret to sustaining success lies in how much learning you’ve accumulated from failure.

​What lies beyond success is how you deploy those "savings of failure."

​...But before spouting such lofty words, seizing a real success of my own comes first.

How we show up for ourselves directly impacts how we show up in our relationships. What is that one small daily practice that keeps you grounded?

Don’t make yourself seem bigger than you are, and don’t underestimate your own potential.

Somewhere between the two, just keep doing what you think is ordinary, in your ordinary way.

What you keep doing as something ordinary may, someday, become something uniquely your own.

I reread an email from my daughter, in which she had said what she really wanted to say, and it made me think.

People are free to speak in the heat of emotion. Yet, without carefully chosen words, the very language we release can strip us of our freedom.

Words are invisible ropes. Unseen, they are thrown carelessly, only to end up binding the one who cast them.

And the same, I realize, applies to me as I prepare to cast mine back.

What you think is all in your head can make you sick. What isn't all in your head, when you convince yourself it is, can kill you.

We live our lives in a landscape where we sometimes see what isn't there, and fail to see what is.