AUGUST 18 — There is a particular moment that has quietly become part of my work, although I cannot remember exactly when it started.
It usually happens after I have finished editing someone’s article. The grammar has been corrected. The structure is clearer. The argument is stronger. In many ways, the work is done. Yet before sending it back, I almost always read through my comments one more time. Not because I have discovered another grammatical mistake, but because I begin wondering how the author might feel when reading them.
A sentence such as, “This paragraph feels off,” gradually becomes, “I wonder if this paragraph could be strengthened by...” A direct instruction quietly turns into a suggestion, and a criticism often becomes a question instead. The article itself changes very little, but I hope the person receiving it experiences something quite different. Looking back, I realise that somewhere along the way, editing stopped being only about improving the manuscript. It also became about taking care of the person who wrote it.
That thought stayed with me much longer than I expected because it made me wonder whether something similar happens in many other parts of adulthood.
When we are younger, relationships often begin with a question that feels perfectly natural. How do they make me feel? We enjoy spending time with people who make us laugh, understand us, challenge us or simply make ordinary days feel a little lighter. Whether it is friendship or romance (or ‘situationships’ nowadays), it is only natural that we first notice how someone else’s presence changes our own experience of the world.
As the years pass, however, I have begun to notice that the question itself quietly changes. Without quite realising it, we become a little less occupied with what another person brings into our life, and a little more concerned with what our own presence brings into theirs. The shift is not dramatic, nor does it happen on a particular birthday or anniversary.
It simply arrives one ordinary day, almost unnoticed, until we catch ourselves rewriting an email, softening a conversation or choosing different words because we care less about winning an argument than about how the other person might carry those words after we have left.
The same quiet change appears in many relationships if we pay attention to it. A husband notices that his wife has had a particularly long day and prepares dinner without feeling the need to announce it. A parent gradually worries less about whether their children appreciate them and more about whether their children feel safe enough to return home with difficult questions. A lecturer eventually stops measuring a class only by examination results and begins wondering whether the students left the lecture theatre just a little more curious than when they first walked in.
None of these moments would attract much attention from anyone else, yet they quietly become the moments from which trust, affection and companionship are built.
I have noticed the same change in leadership as well. Earlier in my career, I probably measured a successful meeting by whether decisions were made and tasks were completed. Those things still matter, of course, but they no longer seem sufficient. These days I find myself wondering whether everyone in the room had the opportunity to speak, whether disagreements remained respectful, and whether people left feeling that their views had been heard, even when their suggestions were not adopted. The meeting minutes may never record those things, but I have come to suspect they often determine whether people look forward to working together again tomorrow.
Perhaps this is why adulthood feels so different from youth. It is not simply because we accumulate more responsibilities or become more experienced. Somewhere along the way, our attention slowly begins moving away from ourselves. We become less interested in asking whether we are receiving enough from the people around us and more interested in whether the people around us are quietly receiving enough from us.
Looking back, I realise that many of the people who have left the deepest impression on my life were not necessarily the funniest, the most accomplished or even the most charismatic. They were the people who somehow made others feel comfortable simply by being present. Conversations felt unhurried, because they somehow ‘speak your language’. Successes felt shared rather than claimed. You rarely left their company thinking about how remarkable they were. Instead, you somehow left feeling a little better about yourself.
Perhaps that is the quieter lesson love has been trying to teach us all along. It begins by asking what another person means to us, which is a perfectly natural place to start. If we are fortunate, however, it does not stay there.
Over time, it gently teaches us to ask a different question altogether. Not how deeply someone has touched our own life, but whether, in ways both large and small, our own presence has quietly made theirs a little gentler.
* The author is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, the Director of UM Press, and the Principal of Tuanku Bahiyah Residential College (KK2), Universiti Malaya. He may be reached at [email protected]
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
