I Sit With What I Cannot 'Fix'

“Your own Self-realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”, said Ramana Maharshi.

And I wonder why he said so.

There was a time I believed I had to do something. Fix what’s broken. Help who’s hurting. Show up like a flame for every frozen heart I met. But through days filled with quiet ache and nights swollen with unanswerable questions, something began to shift.

I no longer want to understand. Not the reasons. Not the causes. Not even the meaning behind it all.

I just want to sit.

With what aches. With what cannot be fixed. With what no teaching, no truth, no technique has softened.

I’ve come to see, I couldn’t fix a thing. Not because I didn’t try, but because the deeper truth whispered otherwise. The world doesn’t need fixing. It needs presence. It needs awareness. It needs those who can sit, still and unshaken, in the fire of being.

And Ramana was right.

It took years of chasing answers to finally let the questions be. Years of offering hands to others before remembering my own. Years of lighting paths for everyone but myself, while the candle within me flickered, unseen.

We’re told to be brave. To be light. To rise. But now there are moments I don’t want to rise. I want to rest. Not in hope. Not in defeat. But in the raw presence of what is.

I began to notice how often healing is spoken of as a destination. As if there’s an end to the ache. But what if healing isn’t a cure but a witnessing? What if we are not broken machines to be repaired, but sacred stories to be held with tenderness?

Some days, I still carry the ache. But I don’t try to name it anymore. I let it move like a tide across my chest, reminding me, to feel is to live, to hurt is to be human and to stay with the pain is to begin walking home.

And in these moments of rawness, I discover a strange kind of clarity. That my silence holds more power than advice. My tears, more wisdom than words. And my stillness, more strength than all the noise I once made trying to be useful.

I no longer want to be someone who changes the world. I want to be someone who witnesses it. Who understands it. Feels it. Forgives it. Not with grand gestures, but with quiet eyes that say, “I see you. And I’m still here.” Let me not fix your wound. Let me sit beside it. Until it no longer fears being alone.

Perhaps this is what the world truly needs, not more warriors who conquer, but more witnesses who stay.

there is a wound in me that no one sees,

a question that never sleeps,

but I no longer push it away,

and I place a hand over it,

gently,

like one would cradle a tired child,

not to silence it,

but to simply be there,

until morning.

I’ve come to learn that wholeness is not perfection. It’s not clarity. It’s not the absence of ache. Wholeness is the quiet courage to be shattered… and still choose love.

Love, not as an answer, but as a presence. Love, not as a solution, but as a space that whispers, “You can be here. Even like this.” And so, I sit. Sometimes with tears. Sometimes with silence. Sometimes with nothing at all. But I sit. Because this too is sacred.

I carry no solution. No resolution. No grand revelation. Still, I walk barefoot into the wilderness of not-knowing. And that, I’ve come to see, is enough.

I remember what Rumi said,“Don’t get lost in your pain. Know that one day your pain will become your cure.”, and I now feel pulse beneath every word.

If this reflection touches your presence, pass it gently to another. Let them know that they don’t need to fix everything either.

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© 2025 Beyond Silence. Written by 'the one listening.'

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