Sometimes it was gratitude taking a longer form.

Later, when thoughts of elsewhere surfaced, he didn’t correct them.

They came the way weather does—unbidden, brief, textured. A harbor at dusk. A train moving through open land. The memory of altitude, of distance measured not in miles but in hours suspended between departure and arrival. He let the images appear without asking what they wanted from him.

Before, those thoughts had been instructions.

Maps disguised as wishes.

Desire mistaken for demand.

Now they arrived differently.

They did not ask to be acted on. They did not insist on timelines or bookings or justification. They were complete as impressions—like recalling a meal that had once been deeply satisfying, without needing to cook it again that night.

He understood then that imagining the future did not always mean preparing for it.

Sometimes it was gratitude taking a longer form.

The mind revisiting places where it had been stretched and fed. The body remembering what it was capable of feeling. Not hunger, exactly—recognition. A quiet acknowledgment that those experiences had happened, had mattered, and had left something usable behind.

He didn’t discard the idea of travel.

He also didn’t elevate it.

The images were allowed to rise, hover, and pass, the way satisfaction does when it isn’t pressed into service. They didn’t have to become plans. They didn’t have to be renounced either. They were permitted to exist without being used.

That, too, was new.

In the past, leaving a desire untouched would have felt like waste. Or fear. Or failure to commit. Now it felt like respect—for timing, for capacity, for the difference between appetite and readiness.

He noticed how this changed everything.

When he didn’t rush to convert longing into motion, the longing softened. It didn’t vanish. It settled. It became spacious instead of sharp. The future stopped leaning forward into him. It waited.

And because it waited, it no longer needed guarding.

Becoming, he realized, wasn’t about narrowing the field of possibility.

It was about no longer being compelled to enter it prematurely.

The old version of him would have believed that dreams existed to be chased or silenced. This one understood they could also be kept warm, allowed to breathe, trusted to return when conditions aligned.

Nothing had been decided.

And that felt like abundance rather than lack.

He remained where he was—not stalled, not hidden, not suspended—but complete in the moment that held him. The future was still there. The past was intact. Neither required action to justify its presence.

Satisfaction was allowed.

And because it was allowed, it stayed gentle.

WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.