A few weeks ago, I hit up this amazing concert. The lights were flashing, the bass was loud, and everyone was singing along as if we shared a deep connection. The atmosphere was a mix of nostalgia and excitement, making me realize, “Wow, we’re all kind of crazy together right now.” Everyone was loud and emotional, creating a vibe like a spontaneous group therapy session with music.
And you know what? Somewhere between the second chorus and the lights flashing over the crowd, I had to be real with myself: I didn’t show up to look all graceful. I came to feel alive, even if my dancing looked totally silly.
So I belted out some tunes and grooved to the beat. I flailed my arms around like the rhythm was trying to sue me, and you know what? I totally didn’t care.
No filtering. No adjusting. No self-monitoring.
Just presence. Just joy. Just me and the music.
It felt like one of those Begin Again moments, when a character stops negotiating with themselves and lets the music hold them exactly as they are.
And on the way home, it clicked: maybe that’s what self-worth actually feels like. Not the polished moments where we appear put together, but the unguarded ones. The ones where joy finds us mid-chaos and we don’t shrink.
Because people who know their worth?
They’re not afraid to look a little silly when they’re having fun.
Not because they’ve stopped caring,
but because they’ve stopped performing.
They don’t trim their joy to fit into something respectable.
They don’t audition for approval in the middle of their own happiness.
It’s that 500 Days of Summer energy, the kind of joy that spills out before you can straighten your posture.
People like that understand something quietly powerful: joy doesn’t detract from your seriousness, maturity, or importance. It simply proves you’re alive.
The next morning, sitting with my coffee, simple, warm, steady, a line from Ryan Holiday’s Stillness Is the Key floated back to me: stillness isn’t the absence of movement; it’s the presence of clarity. It’s when your inner world finally stops competing with itself.
And something about that felt exactly right. The concert was loud, but inside me, there was stillness: a quiet alignment, a sense that my joy and my worth weren’t at odds with each other. Just… finally on the same team.
Holiday talks about knowing when to shift gears, how real strength is the wisdom to choose the right pace for your life: when to focus, when to release, when to breathe, and when to let yourself be carried by something bigger than your thoughts.
Matt Haig echoes this beautifully in The Comfort Book. He writes about how “small happinesses”, a warm drink, a soft morning, a laugh that arrives unannounced, are not trivial at all. They are anchors. Tiny stabilizers. Reminders that being human allows us to feel gentle.
Haig doesn’t tell us to chase joy. He simply reminds us we don’t need a reason to let it in. That peace doesn’t need a storyline. Feeling good is already meaningful in itself.
And maybe that’s the quiet art of knowing our worth: the freedom to shift modes naturally, focused when life calls for it, soft when life allows it, and unapologetically joyful when joy insists. Never ever question your value in any of those forms.
The older I get, the more I notice how quickly we accept discomfort, as if pain makes sense, but ease must prove itself. We rarely interrogate stress, but when life feels gentle? We tilt our heads at it, like it’s a plot twist in a Christopher Nolan film, hunting for hidden complexity in something beautifully simple.
So I’m learning a new practice: letting good moments be good. Letting joy sit beside me without interrogation. Letting ease exist without explanation. Letting softness count as enough.
Not every moment needs to transform us. Not every experience has to be profound or productive. Some things are meant to be lived: tasted, held, enjoyed, without complex analysis.
When a moment feels good, let it.
When joy finds you, let it stay.
When something warms our heart, don’t shrink it with meaning.
Some joys are meant to be lived, not decoded. Some peace is meant to be held, not justified. And sometimes, the most self-respecting thing we can do is to allow ourselves to be the main character of our own joy: off-beat dancing, heartfelt singing, soft mornings…and all the unpolished, absolutely human moments that make us real.
Love,
Kirana
