Zaid Ismail
Zaid Ismail
@zaidie@zaidismail.com

Author, life coach, and mental health activist. We need to change the narrative from disorders, illnesses, and survival to accountability, understanding, and thriving.

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  • The Folly of Love

    There is a mistaken belief that love is restricted to the bonding of hearts in romantic entanglements. We restrict its observance to only those bonds we actively choose, while assuming that anything else must be platonic at best, and casual at least. But there is a love that extends beyond all these constructs and constraints.…

  • Recalibration and Resuscitation

    There are moments when my resolve gives way to feelings of surrender. It usually accompanies moments in my life when I realise that my expectations are consistently exceeding my reality, often relative to those around me. Initially I find myself rejecting the simple truth that that holds, but eventually the unintended cycle of recalibrating my…

  • Personal Space

    The concept of personal space is an interesting one. We’re social beings by nature. We have an innate need to be appreciated and acknowledged for our personal contribution or expression in everything. We insist on withdrawing into a personal space when we are convinced that such appreciation or acknowledgement will be replaced by ridicule or…

  • Elusive

    There has been a sense of peace, or composure that has eluded me all my life. I listen to people talk about concepts like home, relationships, connections, soul mates, and the like, and none of it rings true or familiar for me. I see fathers giving up their time with their daughters when still in…

  • Obliviously Resilient

    Anyone claiming to be free of their ego is in fact driven by it.

  • Defining Moments

    I’ve often mulled over the idea of one day listing the moments that I believe defined me in ways I often still don’t fully understand. The images that flash through my mind when I contemplate those defining moments are often not scenes of hope and happiness, but most often they’re scenes of struggles, pain, isolation,…

  • Introverts don’t exist

    I’ve often been accused of being an introvert. Some apologists would say that it’s not a bad thing, but then they’ll continue to describe specific adaptations in behaviour that ‘normal’ people should adopt in order to understand or engage with introverts more meaningfully. They’re idiots, and so is every other person that allows some idiot…

  • The Reciprocation of Trust

    The strange irony of not being able to trust others is that it inherently makes you untrustworthy. If we just set aside our egos for a minute, we’ll quickly realise that trusting others is not a reflection of their integrity, but is in fact a reflection of our sincerity, or lack thereof. I think it goes…