The Black Swan

November 12, 2025

For centuries, people believed black swans didn’t exist. Every swan anyone had ever seen was white, so they assumed that was all there was. Then one day, someone found a black one.

It shouldn’t have existed, and yet it did.

That single discovery shattered centuries of certainty. And suddenly, looking back, people realized they should have expected it all along. If swans could exist, why not black ones too?

That’s how it always happens. Something breaks the pattern, an unexpected event slips into the story, and for a while, nothing makes sense. But then, with time, you look back and see it differently. You realize that somehow, this—whatever it was—had to happen.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my own black swans.

There are moments that arrive quietly and rearrange everything inside you. You don’t notice it at first, you just keep moving, doing what you’ve always done, but something subtle shifts. You start to feel like a version of yourself has gone missing, though you can’t say which one.

Life moved fast for me for a while. It gave me what I thought I wanted, but took things I didn’t realize were part of my foundation. And now, when things slow down, I feel the weight of what’s gone—the silence after the noise, the stillness after the sprint.

I used to think I was good at being alone. Maybe I only knew how to be distracted.

I used to think I was okay with being alone. Maybe I was just pretending. Maybe I only learned how to be busy, not how to be still. Now, two years later, I feel so attached to everything I care about that I’ve forgotten how to sit quietly with myself.

This wasn’t the plan. I thought I’d be further by now, more certain, more whole. Instead, I’m here, feeling like I’ve let myself down, and the people who still care about me too.

But maybe this is my black swan moment.

Maybe it doesn’t make sense right now, this emptiness, this disconnection, but someday I’ll look back and see why it had to happen. Maybe this was the only way I could learn to rebuild from something real, to find meaning that isn’t borrowed from noise or speed.

Maybe the black swan was never about the surprise itself, but about the realization that we were never as certain as we thought.

And maybe one day, when I look back, all of this will make sense too.

Angad Dhiman

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