I spent the whole week inside my own head.

Not in a bad way. I had real things to reflect on. Monday I walked into a classroom at ISDM (the school I graduated from two months ago) and got introduced as a BRIC Fellow (a fellowship I started in July). Last year I sat in the back row. This week I stood on the stage. That shift alone could fill a month of thinking.

Then there was TA. I run into Excel sessions for the new batch, Batch 10. A hundred students, two sections, five days. I found my own way of explaining things. I used the Excel grid to find people in the room. Row 3, Column 2. That's you. Suddenly the spreadsheet was not a screen anymore. It was the room they were sitting in. That worked. I felt it land.

Then the reflection sessions. Every evening I sit with Sakshi (my co-fellow) and we do Head, Heart, Hand. What did I think, what did I feel, what did I do. I pushed back on the rigid format our mentors wanted. I told them we cannot put growth in a small square box. People reflect in all directions. Let them.

By Wednesday I had found the word for what I was doing: introspection. Planning, monitoring, evaluating. My own loop. I wrote it down. I named it. I went deeper.

By Thursday I did not recognize my own idea when it came back to me. The new batch's orientation used a format I had designed months ago during a design thinking exercise. Reshuffled groups, reflective prompts, sharing rounds. My roommate Pao looked at me and said, "Nami, this was our idea, no?" I had been so deep in my own thinking that I could not see my own work when someone else was holding it.

That is when it should have clicked. But it did not. Not yet.

Then something harder happened.

This week, our PLC (the peer learning community I was part of at ISDM, the group I call family) came together again. Three months after the program ended. Not for a class. Not for a reunion. One of us was going through a really tough time, and we gathered to listen to her and check on her.

It was painful for me too. Before I could be present for her, I had to make sense of what I was feeling myself. That took time. But we stayed. We listened. We showed up. As a team. As a family. Still here for each other, three months later, with no institution telling us to be.

I did not name it then. The lesson was sitting right in front of me, but I was still too deep in my own loop to see it.

It took a movie.

I went to watch Spider-Man with Juree, a senior from ISDM. I was not expecting what happened. Every scene hit something. When MJ and Peter met again, I cried. When the funny parts came, I shouted. Juree was probably wondering what was happening to the person next to her.

Peter spent the whole movie believing he had to carry everything alone. Sitting there, I realized I had spent my whole week doing the same thing.

That is when it clicked. Not in the movie. In my own week. The PLC gathering was not just checking on a friend. It was the lesson. Life had already taught me. The movie just helped me understand it.

And then Sunday happened. Friendship Day. I was in Udaipur with Pao (the one who had to remind me of my own idea) and Shruti. We walked by the lake. We went everywhere. After a long, long time, I had a real break with real people. Not a reflection. Not a framework. Just three friends in the city of lakes, doing nothing important together.

That is the thing I want to say this week.

Reflection is good. I believe in it. I built a daily practice around it. But reflection can become its own kind of isolation. You sit with your notebook, you name your feelings, you find the right word, you go deeper. And somewhere in that depth, you stop noticing that Pao is right there. That Shruti is right there. That Juree is sitting next to you in a dark theatre, watching you lose your mind over Spider-Man.

There are two ways of showing up. One is easy: lakesides, laughter. The other asks something of you: sitting with someone else's pain when you have not finished sorting your own. Both matter. But only one proves you are a community.

You do not have to finish figuring yourself out before you show up for people. They are not waiting for the polished version. They are already there.

Tomorrow I formally start my BRIC Fellowship at ISDM. For the first time in a while, I am not walking in thinking I need to have everything figured out first. I just have to show up. The people are already there.

What is one thing you stopped doing alone this year that got better when someone else was in the room?

Be kind, help people, trust muruga.