The Replays

Brassaï - Boulevard Saint-Jacques

There was a dinner once. Years ago. A new city, a new crowd. I knew one person at the table, a friend who’d invited me to join her and her friends. Everyone else was a stranger.

The conversation went political almost immediately. Local events, international affairs, the kind of topics that are never dull and always dangerous in mixed company. US and Middle East relations. Everyone had opinions. Loud ones.

And a lot of what was being said was just wrong. The opinion is wrong. Factually wrong. Misleading information presented as a settled fact, repeated confidently enough that no one questioned it.

I’m from the Middle East. I was the only one at that table who could speak from experience rather than headlines and secondhand narratives. I weighted this conversation. I knew I did.

But I was also the new guy. The outsider. The quiet one at a loud table in a noisy diner.

I felt the need to jump in a dozen times. Felt it physically, the way you feel the urge to correct someone who’s about to walk into a wall. The opening would appear, a pause, a shift in the conversation, and I’d lean forward slightly, preparing to speak.

And then someone else would fill the space. Or the conversation would pivot before I’d finished formulating how to say what I needed to say without over-explaining, without taking up too much room, without sounding like I was lecturing people I’d just met.

So I stayed in my head.

I showed up when it was explicitly asked, someone turned to me directly with a question, and I answered. But half the moments I wanted to speak, I should have spoken, I didn’t. I let them pass.

I ran that dinner in my head for days afterwards.

All the different versions of how it could have gone. The moment I jumped in after that one comment about refugees. The time I corrected the mischaracterisation of regional politics before it became the foundation for the next ten minutes of conversation. The version where I wasn’t the quiet outsider but someone who contributed, who shaped the discussion, who used the weight I actually had.

But those versions only existed in my head. They never happened.

Brassai

This wasn’t an isolated incident.

I’ve done this hundreds of times. Different rooms, different contexts, different stakes. Meetings where I saw the flaw in the plan but couldn’t find the moment to say it. Presentations where I had the answer and watched the room go in the wrong direction. Conversations where I knew something important and let it stay internal because I couldn’t figure out how to interrupt without feeling like I was forcing myself into a space that hadn’t invited me.

The issue with being shy to jump in at any notice is the post-incident conversation we have with ourselves. Those if-only moments. The replays where we’re suddenly in the middle of it, central stage, first-person perspective, saying exactly what needed to be said at exactly the right moment.

But they only live in our heads.

Most of what goes on in my head is far more interesting than what happens outside. The internal conversation is richer, more layered, more honest than what I can manage to translate into the actual room.

And for years, I thought this was something I needed to fix.

Then I started seeing it in other people.

I can listen. That’s another thing I know about myself with certainty. I’m a good listener.

Which means I can spot other good listeners immediately. It is not magic; they are usually the ones listening.

I worked with someone once who reminded me so much of myself that watching him felt like looking at old footage. Someone from a partner company on a joint project. Shy, the kind of shy that makes every word feel like it needs permission before it can leave your mouth. Kind in his criticism when he did speak, which wasn’t often.

I saw him in meetings, sitting there, processing everything and reading the room. You could see it in his face. He was tracking every point, following every thread, probably having entire conversations in his head about what was being said and what wasn’t being said.

But he couldn’t find the entry point.

I used to do that. Still do sometimes. Sit there, listening, understanding everything, contributing nothing unless explicitly asked a direct question.

Then came a day when I had to work with him directly. His team had framed it as a simple task: take my notes, adjust his data, and implement. Listen and execute.

But I’d seen him in those meetings since day one. And I knew better.

So I did something I don’t think anyone on his team had done. I asked his opinion.

Not in a performative way. Not as a test. Just genuinely: What do you think about this?

It took a moment. That hesitation people like us have when we’re unsure if the question is genuine or if it’s just politeness masquerading as interest.

But then he started talking.

And a couple of his thoughts were important enough that they made me second-guess my own position. Made me realise I’d been heading in a direction that might work but wasn’t necessarily the best direction.

So I brought his ideas back to the team. Both teams, including his.

The dismissal wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just immediate. Not based on the substance of the ideas. Based on the source.

Him.

I could feel it in the room. The subtle recalculation happening behind people’s eyes: If he’s saying it, maybe it’s not worth considering.

So I did something, intentionally. I changed the narrative on the spot. I claimed the ideas as mine.

And suddenly, they were worth discussing. Not because I embarrassed them, not at all. It was because of seniority.

The same thoughts that had been dismissed five minutes earlier were now being debated, refined, and taken seriously.

After the meeting, I went back to him. Explained what had happened. Told him what he had was valuable, but his team wasn’t going to help him. They’d already decided who he was.

I also spoke with his team. Tried to explain that they were working with someone whose silence wasn’t emptiness.

I don’t know if it landed. That wasn’t my team, and I only had that window open for that conversation.

I never ran into him again after that project ended.

But I think about him sometimes. Because I know what was happening in his head during those meetings. I’ve been in his head.

Brassaï’s Paris vu de Notre-Dame

Someone I worked with once called me “a silent designer.” He was describing my approach to problem-solving. How he’d spotted that I was drawing and designing the complexities of the situation in my head while everyone else was shouting and talking over each other.

He was right to spot that. But he was a horrible team leader. He saw what I was doing, named it accurately, but had no idea what to do with it.

I wake up every day trying not to be him. Trying to spot people like me, like that young man, and help them find the calibration between staying in their heads and bringing what they carry into the room.

Because staying in your head isn’t enough. Not for you. Not for the people who need what you see.

That young man wasn’t just quiet in those meetings. He was intellectually lonely. I know because I’ve been there.

The entire conversation is happening in your head. The processing, the connecting, the careful consideration of every angle. All of that interior work, and nowhere for it to go. No entry point. No invitation.

That’s a system that takes people who think deeply and tells them: your manner of thinking isn’t valued here. Perform certainty, or stay silent.

And most people, over time, choose silence.

Brassaï’

For years, I thought this was something I needed to overcome. Then I found a word I’d read a thousand times without stopping to truly reflect on it.

استحياء.

فَجَاءَتْهُ إِحْدَاهُمَا تَمْشِي عَلَى اسْتِحْيَاءٍ قَالَتْ إِنَّ أَبِي يَدْعُوكَ لِيَجْزِيَكَ أَجْرَ مَا سَقَيْتَ لَنَا

“Then one of the two women came to him walking with استحياء. She said, ‘Indeed, my father invites you that he may reward you for having watered for us.’” (Surah Al-Qasas, 28:25)

Not الحياء. Not shyness. Not bashfulness or timidity or any of the things we reduce it to when we translate it quickly and move on.

استحياء is different. It’s the استفعال form, which means it’s not describing a state of being. It’s describing a manner of action. A way of moving through the world.

She wasn’t paralysed by shyness. She wasn’t absent. She wasn’t invisible.

She walked up to Prophet Musa (peace be upon him). Delivered her father’s message. Fulfilled her purpose completely.

But the way she did it, that’s what the Quran preserves. She walked with استحياء. Dignity in her approach. Grace in her conduct. Strength that didn’t need to dominate the space to prove it existed.

This wasn’t a weakness. This was a refined way of being. One important enough that Allah chose to immortalise it in the text.

And it’s not just about women.

إِنَّ ذَٰلِكُمْ كَانَ يُؤْذِي النَّبِيَّ فَيَسْتَحْيِي مِنكُمْ

“Indeed, that was troubling the Prophet, but he was يستحيي toward you.” (Surah Al-Ahzab, 33:53)

This is about the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The leader. The messenger. The one carrying the final revelation.

The context: some companions were staying too long in his home after meals. He had every right to simply ask them to leave. To be direct. But he didn’t. Because he was يستحيي toward them. He was being considerate of their feelings, mindful of how a direct dismissal might affect them, even though they weren’t being particularly considerate of his time.

And Allah didn’t criticise this. The ayah doesn’t frame his استحياء as a leadership failure. It names what he was doing, then addresses the believers directly about their behavior.

But the Prophet’s استحياء? That’s preserved. That’s noted. That’s validated as part of who he was.

The same Prophet who led armies, who negotiated treaties, who made decisions that shaped the course of history, he also practised استحياء.

This is a manner of being. One that recognises power doesn’t require you to disregard other people’s feelings. That you can be effective, decisive, impactful, and still move through the world with استحياء.

Brassaï

When I discovered this, when I really sat with what these ayahs were saying, something shifted.

I realised I’d been trying to fix something that wasn’t broken. This reserve, this carefulness, this tendency to process internally before speaking, it wasn’t a deficiency. It was a manner of being. One that has roots. One that’s validated in my tradition.

But the professional world I operate in teaches something entirely different. The advice comes constantly: Don’t apologise. Don’t say sorry for keeping you waiting, say thank you for your patience. Never start an email with “sorry to bother you.”

Every time I read it, I think: How is this not arrogance?

Sorry is not a weakness. It’s an acknowledgement. Recognition that your actions affected someone else. It’s one of the simplest forms of استحياء, actually. Moving through shared spaces with an awareness that other people exist.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) didn’t need advice on how to be more assertive. He practised استحياء because it was part of his character. And it didn’t make him less effective. It didn’t diminish his leadership.

It was simply the manner in which he moved through it.

But استحياء also taught me something else: this manner of being has value, but value that stays internal serves no one.

That dinner I replayed a hundred times? Someone at that table walked away with misinformation I could have corrected. That young man’s ideas? They would have improved the project, but they stayed in his head until I asked.

How many other ideas has he kept internal? How many rooms has he walked into carrying something important that never made it out?

This is calibration.

استحياء is validated. But it demands something of you. The woman walked with استحياء and delivered her message. The Prophet practised استحياء and led his community. Both knew when to speak and when to hold back.

You have to learn when استحياء serves and when it silences something that needs to be heard. Not because the room demands it. Because what you know matters.

I know a lot of people like me now. Allah has graced me with the ability to spot them, to create space for them, to help them find that calibration in their own environments.

I don’t “fix” them. They’re not broken. I simply know how to build teams that benefit from both ends of the spectrum. That value the loud contributors and the careful processors. That asks the question differently sometimes, which gives people time to run the scenario internally before expecting them to perform it live.

Because I’ve been there. I’ve sat at that dinner table, stayed in my head, replayed it later. I’ve been in meetings where I couldn’t find the entry point. I’ve watched opportunities pass because I was too careful, too considerate, too worried about taking up too much space.

And I’ve also learned what it costs when people like us stay silent. What gets lost. What never makes it into the room.

Brassai

If you’re reading this and recognising yourself, if you’ve replayed a hundred conversations you never had, if you’ve been told you’re too quiet, too reserved, too much in your head, I need you to know something.

You’re not broken.

This reserve, this careful processing, this interior depth, it’s rooted in something deeper than modern leadership frameworks. It has a name. استحياء. And it’s validated in how prophets moved through the world.

But you can’t stay where you are.

Not because the rooms need you to be louder. Because someone depends on what you see. Someone needs the correction you didn’t offer. Someone is waiting for the perspective you keep in your head.

Karun Pal wrote about intellectual loneliness recently (highly recommended). The specific isolation that comes from being mentally alive in a world that’s emotionally asleep. The exhaustion of shrinking your thoughts because depth is treated like a burden.

That’s what I saw in that young man. That’s what I felt at that dinner. Not just quietness. Loneliness. The interior conversation with nowhere to go.

Learn when استحياء serves and when it silences something that needs to be heard. Find the entry points. Practice speaking up, even when it feels like interrupting, even when you’re not sure you’ve formulated it perfectly yet.

Not because you’re broken. Because what you know matters.

That’s the calibration. That’s what استحياء teaches when you really sit with it. Not silence. Not performance. But knowing when your interior world needs to become external, because someone needs it.

You’re not becoming someone else. You’re becoming the version of yourself who knows when to speak.

Thanks for reading Within the Margin of Error! I truly appreciate you taking the time to read my words. I hope I was able to bring you some value in exchange.

Keep Creating.