There’s a scene in House of Cards I’ve never been able to forget.

A group of Tibetan monks spend an entire month inside the White House. Every day, quietly, they use small vibrating tools to tap colored sand onto a board, creating a mandala.

The scene is slow. Almost unbearably quiet. So slow that the main couple walks past it every day without stopping even once.

They’re busy. Busy with power, strategy, conversations, victories, losses. Those grains of colored sand feel too silent, too insignificant.

Until one day, the mandala is finished. And then the monks sweep the entire image away, clean everything up, and leave.

Nothing remains. Everything returns to how it was, as if nothing had ever happened.

That’s when the couple suddenly freezes. It feels like something is missing from the White House. Not the artwork but a stretch of time they could have stopped to witness.

All that remains is a photograph. The photo preserves the shape, but it cannot hold the weight that slowly accumulated over that month.

In that moment, I understood something. What truly matters was never the finished piece. It was the road itself.

That road doesn’t need to reach an endpoint. Because the moment we arrive, it immediately turns into the next beginning. The freest part is the stretch before something gets fixed as a result.

We’re so used to pouring all our attention into what we believe to be important— work, achievements, plans, wins and losses, the future.

And so the things quietly existing beside us, a painting still being made, a sentence not fully heard, a person who chose not to interrupt slip past unnoticed.

Until one day they’re gone, and we realize what we lost wasn’t them, but the version of ourselves who could have truly seen.



—— XC Scribbles · 伍拾玖 LIX 🫧