“When the World Stopped, I Started Living”

When the World Stopped, I Started Living

By[Ali Rehman]

It was March 2020 when the world stopped.

At least, that’s what the news said — the airports closing, the cities silencing, the streets that used to breathe turning into concrete lungs that forgot how to inhale. But before that, I had already been living half-asleep, walking through days like a ghost who kept showing up to a life that no longer recognized him.

I was a marketing executive — the kind who measured happiness by deadlines and caffeine. Every day was a copy-paste of the last: wake, rush, emails, meetings, eat, pretend, sleep. Even weekends were rehearsed. My calendar was so full that I didn’t even realize how empty I was.

Then the world pressed pause.

At first, I fought it. The silence scared me. My apartment felt like a box shrinking around me — too quiet, too honest. Without noise, my thoughts grew loud. I realized how many things I had been avoiding: the loneliness I covered with work, the calls I never returned, the passions I’d buried under invoices and promotions.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks into a strange kind of stillness.

Somewhere in that stillness, I began to see the dust — literal and metaphorical. Dust on the bookshelf I never opened. Dust on the guitar that once made me feel alive. Dust on the person I used to be.

One evening, after another round of scrolling through panic-filled news and motivational clichés, I noticed the sunset bleeding through my window — gold melting into violet. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d just watched the sky change colors. I made tea, sat by the window, and stayed there until the stars appeared. Something in me exhaled for the first time in years.

The next day, I found my old sketchbook. Its cover was cracked, its pages yellowing. My hands hesitated — could I still draw? I picked up a pencil, expecting frustration, but instead found peace in the scratching sound of graphite. Hours passed without my noticing. I didn’t draw perfectly, but I drew honestly.

Each day after that, I rediscovered another piece of myself.

I started cooking again, using recipes my mother used to make. I called her — we hadn’t spoken in weeks. She cried when she heard my voice. “It took the world ending for you to call your mother?” she teased, half-joking. I laughed, but she was right.

Then came the messages from friends — old names I hadn’t seen in years. We started virtual dinners, awkward at first, then warm. It amazed me how the same people I thought I had outgrown still felt like home.

But the real turning point came when I lost someone.

My neighbor, Mr. Han, a quiet man in his seventies, passed away. We weren’t close — just polite smiles in the hallway, small nods at the mailboxes. I found out from the building caretaker. The day after, I noticed his balcony garden — small pots of basil, mint, and lavender — left unwatered, wilting.

For some reason, that broke me. I went out and watered them.

And the next day. And the next.

It became a ritual. Each morning, I’d step onto his balcony, tend to his plants, and think about how easily a life could disappear without notice. The mint started to grow again. The lavender lifted its head. I began talking to the plants, even though no one was listening. Or maybe, someone was.

One morning, as I watered the basil, a little girl across the street waved at me. I waved back. She held up a drawing — a sun and two people smiling. It took me a second to realize one of them looked like me. For the first time in a long time, I felt seen — not for what I did, but for who I was.

That day, I wrote something in my journal:

“When everything stopped, I finally heard myself breathe.”

Months passed. The world started to move again — slowly, hesitantly. People rushed back to the lives they had paused. But I couldn’t go back. Something in me had changed. The noise no longer comforted me; the stillness did.

I quit my job. Not in anger, but with quiet certainty. I began illustrating children’s books — small stories about hope, kindness, and slowing down. My first story was dedicated to Mr. Han. The book was called The Man Who Grew Sunlight.

Sometimes, people ask me what changed.

I tell them nothing and everything.

The world stopped, but it wasn’t the end. It was a beginning — a forced awakening, a reminder that life isn’t meant to be survived on autopilot. It’s meant to be lived — tasted slowly, like the first sip of tea after a long storm.

Now, every morning, I water the plants. I listen to the city outside my window — the laughter, the wind, even the silence. And sometimes, when I watch the sunset bleed into night, I whisper a small thank you to the world that stopped — because that’s when I finally started living.