Yesterday was December 4. While walking toward the shore in the late afternoon, I passed by a seafood restaurant. Sheets of paper were spread across the tables, and on those papers I heard the crack of shells, small snapping sounds, and the strange seriousness with which people were cleaning crabs. It felt almost like a ritual. My eyes caught on one detail the claws of the crabs. In nature they look threatening, armored by their shells, defending themselves with those sharp claws. Yet here they were, breaking helplessly between two human fingers. On one side a creature that appears strong, on the other a human finger that appears weak. And the balance of power was nothing like I imagined. I paused for a moment. There was a strange lesson hidden inside that scene Strength is not always what it looks like from the outside. Sometimes a claw is not enough to defend yourself. And sometimes a finger is far more determined and far more precise than you expect. The crab’s claws reminded me of the ways humans defend themselves. We build shells, wear armor, sharpen our edges so no one can hurt us. But eventually there comes a moment when even the smallest touch can shatter us completely. Maybe the question is not who is stronger but who is more persistent, more prepared, more hungry. At nature’s table and at life’s table the result is the same It is not the hardness of your shell that matters. It is the determination of what reaches inside it. December 4 made me realize this A person is not defeated by their strong side, but by the fragile place they ignore. When I returned home in the evening, I opened my history notebook as I always do. I looked at the page and asked myself, What happened on December 4? At the top of the page there was a single line: December 4, 1991 – Pan Am declared bankruptcy. I paused for a moment. Pan Am had once been the strongest name in the sky. A giant brand that flew to every corner of the world, appearing untouchable. Yet in the end it shattered like a claw snapping under pressure. It was exactly like the scene I had watched earlier that day: The crab that looked strong, breaking apart between fingers that looked weak. There was a similar lesson in the fall of Pan Am. Everything that appears powerful depends on a fragile inner balance. An economy trembles, a decision is delayed, competition rises, and the giant collapses like a paper table. In that moment I understood something: No one in life is truly untouchable. Not a crab, not a person, not an empire. What destroys us is rarely the great blows from the outside. It is the small weaknesses inside us that we never notice. December 4 made me think this: If you have claws you may look strong, but if your inner balance is fragile even the weakest finger can open you. And at the end of the day I wrote to myself: A person is defeated not by their strong side, but by the weakness they refuse to see. Yesterday was a heavy day for the shareholders of Pan Am, but it was a light one for me. Because I was only thinking about the fragility of a crab, while they were carrying the collapse of an empire on their shoulders.

Yesterday was December 3rd. When I woke up in the morning, there was nothing inside me. No excitement, no heaviness, no meaning… As if life had switched itself to “empty” for the day. I was carrying myself like a guest in my own day. “I won’t get a story out of today,” I thought. “This day isn’t even worth writing about.” Then suddenly, a friend came by. The conversation started with something as simple as the weather. And then, out of nowhere, a sentence fell from his mouth: “I cheated on my spouse.” In an instant, the emptiness of the day cracked open. An ordinary afternoon opened a door into one of the darkest corners of human nature. At first, I felt sadness not for him, but for the deep, invisible wounds people open inside themselves… For the collapse of trust, the exhaustion of love, for those shadowy places a person cannot explain even to themselves. But then sadness gave way to curiosity: Why? Why does someone betray the person they claim to love? Why does a person run from the very one they want to belong to, searching for themselves inside the body of a stranger? Slowly, an answer formed in my mind: Sometimes a person does not betray their partner, they betray their own emptiness. Sometimes they cheat not on the person they love, but on the disappointment they carry inside themselves. And sometimes, they start seeing in someone else a version of the partner they wish they had. Maybe fidelity is not the real issue. Maybe the truth is this: A person projects the missing part of their partner onto someone else’s face and clings to that illusion. Human emotions are not governed by morality as much as we pretend. Most of the time they are ruled by lack, by emptiness, by feelings that were completed in the wrong places. And that ordinary day suddenly made me realize: People do not get lost because they betray they get lost because something inside them remains unfinished. And everyone who feels incomplete believes they will be completed in someone else. Yesterday, December 3rd, was so painfully ordinary… I thought I wouldn’t have a single word to say. But a day that began in silence suddenly spiraled into the darkest chambers of human psychology. Evening came, and as always, I opened my history notebook. I looked up: “What happened on December 3?” At the top of the page, one event stood out: December 3, 1967 – The first human heart transplant in the world was performed. Christiaan Barnard removed a failing heart from a human body and replaced it with a new one. A turning point in the history of medicine. But while reading that line, another thought crossed my mind: Human beings have always known how to replace their hearts we’ve only recently learned how to do it in a medical sense. Some people change a heart on an operating table, while others change it silently, hidden inside the folds of a relationship. A heart grows old, gets tired, decays. Then suddenly someone appears and awakens places inside you that haven’t moved in years.

Yesterday was December 2.

The moment I woke up, there was a strange tremor inside me. It felt as if I was not rising from a bed, but emerging out of a darkness. For an instant I thought I was back in a womb; then I sensed that silent void pushing me outward, toward another realm. It felt as if I were being born. Familiar and ancient, like a memory from before memory.

This thought stayed with me the entire day.

A baby in the womb lives inside its own universe; for it, everything is contained there. A baby believes the womb is the whole cosmos. That dark shelter is its sky, a cosmic tent with walls that shimmer like distant stars. The cord is a channel carrying light and nourishment from the center of that universe. If a baby could speak and ask what happens after death, who could explain to it that it will be born? When its tiny world collapses, how could it know that a wider world is waiting?

Maybe we too are inside such a riddle. Maybe birth is the death of one universe, and death is the birth of another. Maybe nothing ends; it simply changes places.

This thought suddenly softened the fear from the morning nightmare. What frightened me was not dying. It was stepping into what I could not yet see.

In the evening, as always, I opened my history notebook. What had happened on December 2?

On December 2, 1804, Napoleon crowned himself. Instead of taking the crown from the hands of the pope, he placed it on his own head. That day he told the entire world a simple message: I create myself.

But yesterday I understood something: A person may try to shape themselves however they wish, yet between the place they are born and the place they will be born again, they walk through the same field of uncertainty.

Napoleon did not choose his birth, nor do we choose our end.

Power is sometimes nothing more than a game, a mirage that makes us forget the borders of fate.

December 2 made me think this: Perhaps none of us is the ruler of our own story. We all move toward an unseen birth. And life is only a bridge swinging between these two beginnings.

Last night I whispered to myself:

Maybe today I was being born again. Maybe a dark womb inside me was closing, and without realizing it I was preparing for the light of another world.

Yesterday’s story was heavy. But what it made me feel was incredibly light: Every human is born many times throughout life. And every birth begins with darkness.