This is a personal post.
Not about work or product or strategy - but about a place that caught me off guard, and the space it created in my mind. Hope you enjoy the read.
Moab was not on my calendar when I landed in US. A few meetings in Salt Lake City took us out of Chicago and landed us into a beautiful city close to some spectacular national parks . In a last minute decision - we got ourselves a rented car, and that impulse led us into a stretch of desert that kept unfolding surprises at every bend.
We drove into Arches first - vast red walls curved against the sky, each formation a patient reminder that endurance can be beautiful.
Then Canyonlands, where the horizon bent into layers of red and ochre, each line marking time I couldn’t fathom.
Two hundred million years ago, this land sat under an inland sea. Layers of sandstone, silt, and salt built upon one another, then buckled, cracked, and weathered away. Wind and water did their patient work - carving what remains into bridges of stone and canyons so vast they seem to hold time itself.
I had no expectations - no checklist of viewpoints to capture. I thought I’d find beauty, but I wasn’t prepared for awe. Moab didn’t just impress me; it transported me. Standing there felt like being pulled back in time — not decades, but millions of years.
And then we went up Hell’s Revenge , a trail that lives up to its name. The 4x4 tilted at impossible angles, the tires gripping slickrock that looked like it belonged on another planet. Heart pounding, sand in our teeth, the wind loud in our ears. It wasn’t danger that thrilled me, it was the rawness , and how alive the landscape made me feel, how it demanded both trust and surrender.
I went in with no plan, and that turned out to be the point.
Standing in Moab, you can’t escape the scale of time. Millions of years compressed into a cliff face, an arch that looks effortless but is anything but. Erosion did what ambition never could: shape permanence out of patience.
It made me slow down. Not in the tourist sense of “switching off,” but in the sense of realizing that much of what I run after operates on timelines so short, they shrink to irrelevance when placed against a desert wall. The desert keeps time differently. And for a few days, so did I.
I’ve been thinking a lot about growth , about what changed in the last half a decade: the beliefs I held, the ones I let go of, the relationships that strengthened and frayed. Somehow in Moab, those thoughts felt louder. Not because the desert spoke, but because it didn’t.
Also , there is a parallel I can’t ignore.At work, we prize speed and planning, though much of it unfolds in unpredictable chaos.But the things that endure - trust, clarity, culture, even real innovation - they don’t sprint into existence. They are eroded into being. Pressure, time, persistence.An arch is as much what’s missing as what remains.And maybe that’s true of us too. I didn’t find answers in Moab. No “aha moment,” no revelation that rewires the next decade of my life. What I left with were better questions.
Questions about growth - not the kind you can present on a slide, but the kind that shows up quietly. In how you breathe. In how well you sleep. In how you respond instead of react, or how at ease you feel in your own skin. In whether your body feels like an ally, your mind feels uncluttered, and your choices feel deliberate. For years, I treated health as something to manage; lately, it feels more like the foundation I had forgotten I was standing on.
And the truest measure of growth might simply be how grounded I feel within myself. The steadiness in discomfort. The grace in letting go. The calm in not having to prove anything.
Questions about relationships - the ones that stretch beyond years or roles you play. I’ve started noticing how different conversations feel when I’m not half elsewhere, when I’m not preloading my next sentence. Presence has its own gravity. It deepens what’s already there. It turns time with people into something that leaves a trace.
I’ve found closeness with people I once thought I’d only know professionally, or in passing. Depth that arrived quietly, through small, unplanned moments - shared humor, vulnerability, listening without agenda. It reminded me that connection doesn’t always grow where you invest most effort; sometimes it finds you when you finally slow down enough to let it.
Questions about achievement - I’ve been fortunate to experience so much of what I once defined as success. Each milestone felt meaningful in its time, yet I now find myself drawn to a different question: what does achievement look like when it’s no longer about reaching, but about resonance? About creating things that move people, not just metrics.
Achievement, I realized, isn’t something to chase - it’s something to grow into. It’s not a summit but a state. Less about speed, more about substance. Less about what gets built, more about what endures.
Happiness is a target; contentment is a state.
Happiness says, “I’ll feel fulfilled when…”
Contentment says, “I’m at peace with what is, even as I grow.” Contentment is deeper.
It comes from learning to simply sit. To notice. To be aware without always becoming something. When you are present , truly present , time doesn’t slip through your fingers. Each moment becomes distinct, felt, lived.
Contentment comes from:
Being present without proving anything
Building because it’s interesting, not impressive
Conversations without agendas
Listening to my son explain a new idea, argue a point, or lose himself in a book — and realizing that these are the moments that define a life
Doing work that feels aligned with who I am, not just what I’m good at
Finding steadiness in uncertainty, and gratitude without occasion
Letting ambition coexist with ease
Maybe that’s what Moab gave me - not answers, but orientation.
A reminder that stillness isn’t the opposite of motion; it’s what makes motion meaningful. That even as I build and lead and move fast again, I can hold onto this slower rhythm beneath it all - the awareness that not everything valuable is measurable, and not every horizon needs to be chased.
I’ve spent much of my life in forward motion — solving, scaling, shaping things that grow fast. This experience reminded that I also need to tend to the things that grow slowly — my health, my relationships, parenting, my curiosity, my craft, and the kind of wisdom that comes only when you stop trying to hurry it.
Some things like clarity of strategy, a product philosophy, or a life that feels whole — are built the same way arches are: slowly, quietly, by what time takes away.
And back in Moab - The night sky never cleared. The stars stayed hidden.
But maybe that was the point.
Sometimes the sky doesn’t have to reveal itself - you have to see it for yourself.
Nice thoughts and brilliant reflections connecting it to work.