I don’t know what shifted.
Maybe I’m too tired. Maybe I’ve cried enough. Maybe something inside me just loosened, finally, after holding on for too long.

I was driving—nothing particularly special about that. The sky wasn’t extraordinary. The road was the same one I always take. The weight of my worries hadn’t disappeared. My husband is still unemployed. The debts are still towering. I’m still the sole provider. I’m still in the middle of this long, exhausting storm.

My God, I’ve been fighting all that, hard! I write. I read. I meditate. I run. I lift weights. I even show up to my martial arts class once a week. There’s always this voice in my head saying, “None of this matters, you’re still drowning,” but I try to ignore it. I try to keep moving anyway. And it does matter.

Then today…
Something clicked differently.
There it was.
A strange calm.
A quiet kind of peace.
Komorebi.

A Japanese word for sunlight filtering through leaves—light finding its way to touch the earth.
That’s what it felt like.
Not that the storm had ended. But for once, I wasn’t running from it. I was in the center of it, eyes wide open, heart oddly still.

I thought of what Eckhart Tolle said:
“The mind cannot cope with the future or the past. It can only cope with the present.”

And in that present moment, this was my truth:
I was driving. My car still had gas. The air conditioner worked.
I didn’t have money, but I didn’t have anything due right now.
I was breathing.
I was healthy.
I was going home.
My son had just played the Blue Danube on his violin.

Right then, I didn’t need to be anywhere else.
Right then, everything was… enough. All is well as it is.

This moment of komorebi—was not random.
It was a crack where grace slipped in.
A clarity that blooms not when life is easy, but precisely when life has been so hard, for so long, that your mind finally lets go of the illusion of control—
and for a breath,
you are just be.

For so long, I thought this mishmash of problems was all my fault.
As if I’d made one wrong turn after another.
But today I saw it differently.
Maybe all of this had to happen—not as punishment, but as preparation.
So I could grow.
So I could learn.
So I could live fully.

I don’t really understand what happened today.
But I’m writing this so I don’t forget.
So that if someone else out there is also tired, and still showing up anyway, they might recognize their own komorebi.

Sometimes, we don’t have to fight, we just need to notice the light.
The storm is real.
But so is the stillness.
So is the breath.
So is the sunlight through the leaves.
So is this strange and beautiful place.

So is Komorebi

Karin Sabrina