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Life According to Kinetic Sand

As a child, joy was a simple thing. It came in way too many forms; some might find it through endless scrolling, video games, animated characters, football matches, building Barbie dreamhouses, or starting unnecessary fights with their siblings just because they could (explains my household)... The possibilities were endless. Yet somehow, even after being surrounded by all these “advanced” sources of joy and entertainment, I found myself fascinated by something as simple as a container of kinetic sand.

A strange choice, I know. Most children were busy trying to defeat imaginary villains or dragons, and I was sitting there, squeezing a pile of colorful sand like I discovered the meaning of existence. The more I played with it, I realized it was really not just a toy. It was a literal representation of everything we spend our lives trying to understand.

Life itself is an extremely confusing concept. Everyone has their own definition of what it means to live. Some people chase money, some chase happiness, some chase approval, and some are still figuring out what they are even chasing in the first place. But one thing seems certain, a person was never meant to remain one perfect shape forever.

From the moment we are born, we are constantly being molded. Experiences, failures, friendships, losses, achievements and even the smallest moments that we barely remember slowly shape us into someone new. We are basically human kinetic sand that is constantly being pressed, reshaped, and molded by the hands of time.

And the scary thing is, nobody really prepares us for this. We are handed a life and expected to know exactly what to do with it,as if there is some hidden instruction manual that everyone else received except us. Somewhere along the way, many people start letting others hold the mold. They allow society, expectations, comparisons, and opinions to decide what shape they should become. They begin changing themselves just to fit into spaces that were never made for them. They look at someone else’s life and start questioning their own.

“Am I even trying hard enough?” “Why can’t I be more like them??”

And slowly, they forget that kinetic sand was never created to stay in one shape. Its entire purpose is to change.

The more I played with kinetic sand, the more I noticed its strange contradiction. It could become the most stable, perfect structure with just enough patience and care. A triangle, a castle, a shape that looked almost impossible from something so loose and fragile. But with one simple touch, it could collapse and become something completely different.

Yet it never stopped being valuable.

I could press it, destroy the shape I spent time creating, and it would not complain. I could throw it onto the ground, and instead of breaking into pieces, it would simply adjust. It would absorb the impact, collect itself, and wait for the next form it was going to become.

Maybe that is what resilience actually looks like.

Not being unbreakable. Not pretending that nothing affects you. But having the ability to fall apart and still believe that you can be created again.

People spend so much time trying to become the “perfect version” of themselves that they forget perfection was never the goal. A piece of kinetic sand is not beautiful because it stays untouched. It is beautiful because every mark, every change, and every transformation becomes part of its story.

Maybe humans are the same.

We are not “finished sculptures” placed somewhere to be admired. We are unfinished creations constantly being reshaped by life. Some days we become something we are proud of. Some days we completely lose our form and wonder what went wrong. But even then, we are still waiting to be molded into something new.

We were never meant to be one perfect shape.

We were only meant to keep becoming.