By the time you realise you’re responsible, the shift has already happened.

The year has changed. The calendar has turned. And somehow, life has already resumed its pace.

You don’t announce it. You don’t mark the moment. You just start doing things differently. Small adjustments at first. Things you assume are temporary. Ways of managing that feel practical, not personal.

You take a little more on.

You speak a little less about it.

You move a little faster through decisions.

Nothing dramatic changes.

And yet, something has.

The first thing most people learn is silence.

Not a wounded silence. Not withdrawal. Just a functional one. The kind that saves time. The kind that keeps things moving.

You stop explaining every decision. You stop narrating your thought process. You stop checking whether what you’re carrying is reasonable before you carry it.

“I’ll handle it” becomes a complete sentence.

Sometimes it also becomes a lifestyle.

Not because you don’t have anything to say,

but because saying it doesn’t always help. Silence becomes efficient. It reduces friction. It also saves you from having to explain yourself for the fifth time.

So you quiet yourself, just a little. Enough to cope. Enough to keep going without turning your life into a group project.

Then, without consciously deciding to, you start adjusting your expectations.

Not in a dramatic, disappointed way. More like recalibration. Like realising the version of life you planned for assumed unlimited energy and perfect timing.

You stop expecting things to work out neatly. You stop waiting for ideal timing. You stop measuring your life against versions of success that only exist in theory.

You choose what’s workable instead of what’s impressive. Which is less glamorous, but far more survivable.

You aim for progress instead of certainty.

You learn to live with things being unfinished.

It’s not that you’ve given up. It’s that you’ve learned how to keep going.

And somewhere in all of this, you become “fine”.

Not fine as in untouched. Fine as in functional.

“I’m fine” starts meaning, “I can carry this today.” Not forever. Just today. It becomes shorthand for competence, not comfort. A way of signalling that things are under control, even if they’re not fully resolved.

 

You still feel things. You just don’t stop for them as often. You keep moving, trusting that you’ll deal with whatever surfaces later, when there’s more room. Or when you finally get five minutes of silence that you did not schedule.

This is how coping settles in.

Quietly.

Gradually.

Without asking for permission.

What people don’t always notice is that coping has a cost.

It works. That’s why it sticks. But it asks for small payments along the way, usually when you are not looking.

You flatten things without realising it. Not your joy entirely, just your range. You become less reactive. Less surprised. Less inclined to check in with yourself unless something is clearly wrong.

You postpone rest. Not intentionally. Just practically. There’s always something that feels more urgent. Something that needs handling first. You tell yourself you’ll circle back when things settle, even though things have not been settling for a while.

You become good at functioning through uncertainty. So good that you forget uncertainty is still there, sitting quietly in the background like an unpaid tab.

None of this feels alarming in the moment. It feels like competence. Like growth. Like maturity doing what maturity does.

And in many ways, it is.

This is how people become capable. Not through confidence, but through repetition. Through learning that life keeps moving, whether you feel ready or not, and adjusting accordingly.

You don’t wake up and decide to be resilient. You just keep responding. Keep adapting. Keep finding ways to make things work.

Over time, that becomes your baseline.

The danger isn’t that you’re doing something wrong. It’s that adaptation is so quiet, you don’t notice it’s happening. You don’t always mark the shift from “this is temporary” to “this is how I live now.”

You don’t always ask yourself what you’ve normalised.

What you’ve absorbed.

What you’ve stopped questioning.

So this isn’t about undoing how you cope.

It’s about recognising it.

About noticing the habits you built to survive a phase, and asking whether you still need all of them now. About understanding that becoming capable often happens before you fully realise what it’s costing you.

Most people don’t realise they’ve learned how to cope until they stop and see the pattern.

This is how people become steady without ever deciding to.

And maybe that’s Luxury Silk.

Ada Obiajunwa
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Ada Obiajunwa writes from Lagos about the big truths tucked inside ordinary moments — friendship, self-discovery, and the quiet revolutions of everyday life. She believes in the power of presence, good banter, and decoding the unsaid. Through her fragrance studio, WhiffWonders, she also crafts scents that weave memory and emotion into experiences that feel like home.