When the Egg Stood Still

Christopher Columbus has just returned from his voyage.

The hard part is over. He’s back at a dinner table, surrounded by important people who never left the safety of home.

There is praise, of course. But there is also something else: ego. A few men say, half joking, half serious,
“Anyone could have done what you did. You were just the first.”

Columbus doesn’t argue. He doesn’t pull out maps or talk about storms or fear.

Instead, he picks up a boiled egg from the table and says,
“Can any of you make this stand on its tip?”

It sounds easy. One by one, they try.

The egg slips, leans, rolls sideways. They laugh, explain, complain. Someone says it’s impossible. When they are done, Columbus takes the same egg.
He taps the bottom of it gently on the table, just enough to make a tiny flat base, and stands it up.

The egg stays upright. Suddenly, the whole room goes quiet.
Now it looks simple. So simple that someone says,
“Well, I could have done that.”

And Columbus replies,
“Yes, you could have. But you didn’t.”

I like this story because it shows something simple about how we see success. Once something is done, it suddenly feels obvious. Before it is done, it looks strange, risky, or not worth the trouble. With Columbus and his egg, people only remember the egg standing still. They don’t see the wobble, the doubts, or the small, clumsy attempts that came before.

Work is the same. A small newsletter that later becomes a strong channel begins as one unsure email. A niche that becomes your best market starts as a choice that feels too narrow. A more human brand voice begins as a single draft that sounds “too simple” in a room used to big words. At the start, none of these look brilliant. They just look different, and different is easy to question.

In marketing and in building businesses, you may have felt this yourself. Perhaps you’ve wanted to stop talking to “everyone” and focus on the customers who truly need you. Or to stop chasing more leads and deepen a few honest conversations. Or to make your content genuinely useful, not just full of offers. These are sensible thoughts, but inside most companies they meet the same questions: will this give us enough leads this quarter, how will we measure it, what if it fails? So the safer path wins: more ads, more noise, more of what already feels familiar.

And yet, if you look at the brands you quietly respect, most of them have had their own “egg moment.” Someone decided to choose a clear segment instead of everyone. Someone dared to use simple language instead of jargon. Someone chose long-term trust over quick spikes. Those decisions only looked obvious later, when they had already worked.

This is where it comes back to you. You may already be carrying an “egg idea”: a clearer way to describe what you do, a quieter campaign that feels like a real conversation, a focused offer for people you truly understand, a softer way of showing up that matches who you are. It doesn’t need a grand reveal. It needs a small test: one pilot, one new page, one honest email, one campaign where the goal is depth, not volume. That small experiment is your gentle tap on the shell.

If it works, people will say, “Of course we should talk like this; of course this is our main audience; of course this is how our marketing should be.” They will see the egg standing and call it common sense.

So next time you feel that steady sense that there is a better way to do things in your team or your marketing, remember Columbus and his egg. You don’t need a big speech, or everyone’s approval. You just need to trust the idea enough to give it one honest, gentle tap.

A Great Quote

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” — Slyvia Plath

Book Review: “The Summer Book — Tove Jansson

This book is small like an island and deep like the sea around it. A grandmother and a little girl spend a summer together on a bare rock of land. The father is there but mostly in the background, working, watching, quiet. The mother is gone, and the book never turns that into a speech. It lets the wind, the water, and the slow days do the talking.

What I loved is how the two of them make a life out of very little. They walk over stones that still hold the day’s heat. They lie on their backs and watch clouds. They build a tiny city out of bark and moss, then let the tide take it. They bicker, forgive, wander, come home to simple food, and sleep with salt still in their hair. Nothing grand happens, and yet the pages feel full.

The grief is present, but it isn’t loud. It sits with them like a third person at the table. The girl asks sharp, honest questions the way children do; the grandmother answers with mischief, patience, and the kind of wisdom that comes from having lived a long time in real weather. Sometimes she tells a story to keep fear from growing. Sometimes she lets silence do the work. The book trusts that small rituals tidying a path, checking the sky, boiling coffee can carry love where big explanations cannot.

There is a scene that stays with me: a night walk over the rocks when the sea is breathing evenly and the world feels both close and endless. The girl holds the grandmother’s hand, then lets go, then takes it again. Nothing is resolved. But the air is kind, and the island holds them, and the heart understands that this is what safety can look like after loss—movement, company, and a place to stand.

Jansson’s language is plain and clean. She notices the exact look of lichen, the way a gull tilts, the way a child’s mood turns with weather. The chapters are short, almost like little stones you can pocket. You read one and feel calmer; you read three and feel braver. By the end, you know these two people as if you had shared their porch and counted the same stars.

Read this if you want a book that makes room for grief without pressing it, and makes space for joy without noise. It reminds you that peace doesn’t arrive all at once; it grows out of small days done well—walking, mending, talking, keeping an eye on the sky—and that love, at its best, is simply staying near, season after season, while the tide goes out and comes back in.

P.S.: If this newsletter brought you calm, pass it on to someone who’d enjoy the silence too.

About : Every two weeks, I sit down to write a quiet note: something like a pause in the middle of a restless day. Inside, you’ll find small reflections on change and growth, a line or two that lingers in the heart, and a book that has left me seeing the world a little differently.

Think of it less as a publication and more as a letter with the kind of words that steady us when the world moves too fast.