Some lives are lived on the periphery

I have never been of the crowd. 

From a young age, I flinched from the tumult of group interaction and enforced sociability. School playgrounds felt like battlefields, parties a series of uneasy truces. I simply existed on a different frequency. Where others thrived in the noise, I was attuned to silence, solitary trails, and quiet rooms lit by a single lamp, with a book at hand. My comfort was sometimes collective, through a handful of close friends; but mostly, it was singular.

For years, I wrestled with this aspect of myself. Society, after all, is not built for solitude. It prizes connection and collectivism. It labels aloneness as deficiency, something to overcome. The pressure during my education and early working life was consistent and relentless: participate more, connect more, be more like us. The implicit message was clear—I was malfunctioning.

But what if some of us are simply built differently? What if solitude is not a problem to solve, but a state to accept?

The beautiful, haunting ghazal by Mohsin Naqvi, “This Heart, This Unruly Heart of Mine,” revolves around one poignant Urdu word: aawargi. Often translated superficially as wanderlust, its nuance is deeper—an existential restlessness, an inbuilt orientation toward solitude. This is not chosen isolation, nor rebelliousness. It is something intrinsic, an emotional architecture. A destiny anchored in quietness.

I first heard the maestro Ghulam Ali sing this this ghazal as a teenager. It passed me by. Listening to it in middle age brought understanding. I recognized something important about myself. I too have been shaped by an inner aawargi, a fundamental inability to find lasting peace in the crowded marketplace of human connection. It is neither better nor worse—just fundamentally different. To live truthfully, I had to embrace my nature fully, not resist it. Fighting against it was exhausting and fruitless, like swimming against a strong current toward a shore where I didn’t even want to land.

Society often struggles with difference. It constructs pathways of “normality” and expects compliance. Yet some of us are destined to walk quietly along the margins—not in defiance, not in rejection, but simply because that is where our truth resides. The unusual, the introverted, the naturally solitary—these personalities should not be stigmatized, corrected, or endlessly questioned. They enrich the world differently, offering insight drawn from quiet observation, deep reflection, and authentic self-knowledge.

My own journey toward accepting natural solitude was slow and often painful. It involved shedding layers of imposed expectation and quietly affirming a truth others found puzzling or inconvenient. Some were offended, others quick to misunderstand. In time, though, it brought profound peace. What once felt like exile gradually became sanctuary.

Indeed, my best work only occurred in the second half of my life, once that sanctuary had been embraced. 

I give meaningful advice to leaders and organizations precisely because I view them independently and objectively from outside the throng, free of its perturbations. I write the way I do because I am not compelled to fit in, to produce prose that is marketable and crafted to be popular.

I founded a leadership programme that is often described as unlike anything else by those who’ve experienced it, because it was designed from inception to be different, not benchmarked and graded against others.

This is not a rejection of the majority, please note. I am neither judging nor belittling those who enjoy more mainstream beats. We should all be free to honour our natures and preferences. One way to be is not superior to the other. 

In fact, my advice to organizations often focuses on building vibrant communities and unusual kinship in workplaces—because it is an observable truth that all humans are nourished by inclusion and belonging. What we must guard against is turning the shared home into a prison of enforced expectations and narrow norms. 

In the first half of our lives we all benefit from mixing and mingling freely with others. I did, too. How else are we to shape our singular selves, if not through the mirror of others? And to embrace solitude is not to reject loved ones or close relationships. It is simply to value depth over breadth.

Nonetheless some hearts, some souls, simply thrive best away from the chorus of consensus. This is the deeper insight offered by Mohsin Naqvi’s quiet verses, which are wrapped in melancholy yet radiant with understanding. Solitary souls are neither damaged nor incomplete. They are whole precisely in their apartness.

I now know that my solitude is not deprivation, but clarity; not emptiness, but spaciousness. It is the quiet ground from which my best work emerges, the home in which I dwell most authentically. I have learned, at last, not just to accept my solitude, but to love it, to safeguard it, and to quietly advocate for a world that recognizes the dignity of difference.

THE SIGNAL IN THE NOISE

To stand apart is not to stand against. Solitude isn’t withdrawal—it’s how some of us tune into what matters. Let’s make space for difference, not diagnose it.

*********

Folks, I will be away from the crowd for a bit, so there’ll be no Signal next week. Back soon.

 

Like it? Hate it? Engage here