Yasir Abbas

I want to share a story. But first, let me tell you why.

Because sometimes, clarity doesn’t arrive with answers. It comes wrapped in confusion. In silence. In strange turns of fate that make no sense at the time, until one day, they do.

This is more than a story I once read. It became the story I was living.

I had once been in HR, a role I took pride in. But if I’m honest, that position wasn’t given to me because I was the most qualified or skilled. It came through acquaintance, a door opened more by connection than credentials. Still, I held that fort for nearly a decade. I learned. I adapted. I served with whatever I had.

Yet beneath that surface, something was quietly eroding. Because the very way I got the job was through familiarity, not merit. It began to eat away at my confidence. I was aging, with no academic qualifications to fall back on. The thought of losing this job was a shadow that never left me. I lived with that fear constantly.

So I tried to prepare. I told myself I needed a cushion—a second income, some stability in case things collapsed. I poured my savings into the stock market, hoping to build a safety net. But I didn’t understand my own compulsions. I chased risks. I lost everything. And I knew, deep down, that I wouldn’t easily find another job if this one ended. I didn’t have the paper credentials, the network, or the narrative.

In desperation, I tried a number of other things. Small ventures. Side hustles. Experiments. But nothing worked.

All the while, my frustration with myself grew heavier, the shame of depending on a job I didn’t control, the anger at not being able to break free, the fear of collapse. And so one day, with more courage than clarity, I decided to confront that fear head-on. I resigned. I wanted to take back control. To face whatever future awaited me, instead of waiting for it to pounce.

I even recruited my own replacement. It felt symbolic, as if I was walking away on my terms.

But fate had other plans. The person I recruited lasted only six months before resigning due to family reasons. And for a time, I was back to square one. The resignation faded into the background. I resumed my duties. The machine kept running, and I was part of it again. Things returned to “normal,” even though nothing had changed inside me.

Yet again, the story twisted. The quiet need for someone more “official,” more qualified, began to surface once more. This time, there was no conversation. No warning. No conflict.

Just a quiet displacement.

I was replaced. No confrontation. No explanation. Just quietly moved aside. I remained on the payroll but in every other way, I was invisible. Not to my benefactor, who had given me the job and continued to keep me there, but to the rest of the company.

The paycheck continued. But my purpose didn’t.

That hurt more than being fired.

I desperately wanted to quit. I saw my job as a cage, and on the other side was freedom—real, soul-saving freedom.

At first, shame settled in. Then came the anger. I wanted to disappear and return stronger. To make that feel reasonable, I came up with a new escape plan, something that could justify quitting my job without looking like defeat. I even named this fantasy: six months of ghost mode, a complete disappearance from the noise, a rebirth in silence. It felt like a solution, especially because I had already exhausted every business and investment attempt I could think of.

I wanted to leave. Again. I wanted to scream. But the burden of responsibility whispered louder than pride. So I stayed.

But life, as it does, intervened. Again.

There was no financial runway. My children’s needs were growing. There was no backup plan, only bills and responsibilities. So I stayed. Not out of courage. Out of necessity.

This time, not afraid. Just numb. Disillusioned.

Months passed in this strange limbo. I continued to work, technically but there were no meetings. No micromanagement. No deliverables. Just… space.

At first, it felt like abandonment. Later, it started to feel like something else. But I couldn’t name it yet.

Then one quiet afternoon, I remembered a story I had once read while I was in Iran, tucked inside a Persian language learning textbook, a tale called Gereh Gosha’i: The Untier of Knots.

It was about a beggar who wandered from house to house collecting scraps. One day, someone gave him a handful of wheat, which he tied into the corner of his skirt. Hidden in that wheat were a few gold coins, a secret blessing he didn’t know he had.

Later, exhausted and bitter, he sat beneath a tree and cried out in prayer:

“O Untier of Knots, untie the knot of my misfortune!”

As if in response, the knot in his skirt suddenly unraveled. The wheat spilled all over the ground.

Frustrated, the beggar scolded God:

“Not that knot! I meant the knot of my life! The misery, the hardship, not the one holding my wheat! Can’t You tell the difference?”

Angry and muttering, he knelt to gather the fallen grains. That’s when he saw it: the glint of gold among the dirt. Hidden treasure he would have never found if the knot had remained.

Had the knot stayed tied, he would’ve missed the gold hidden in the wheat.

And in that moment, the beggar wept in awe. His prayer had been answered. Just not in the way he expected.

As I recalled that tale, something shifted inside me.

I was the beggar. My job, which I once saw as a prison, was the knot. I had begged God to untie the hardships of my life. But I had a very specific image of what that should look like: a resignation, a rebirth, a new business, validation, freedom.

Instead, I was sidelined. Forgotten. Left with a salary but no role. No recognition.

And I was angry. Just like the beggar.

“This isn’t what I asked for.”
“God, You misunderstood me.”
“Why are You doing this to me?”

But slowly, I began to see…

That quiet sidelining gave me something rare: time. No meetings. No obligations. No distractions.

Just time to breathe. To observe. To plan. To get healthy.

Time to dream again without the risk of unemployment. Time to live the very ghost mode I had once romanticized, not in the mountains, but in the forgotten corner of an office.

God did untie a knot. Just… not the one I meant. And not the way I expected.

This story became more than a parable, it became a mirror.

I realized we often don’t understand the nature of our own prayers.

We ask for change but only on our terms. We seek transformation but without unraveling. We long for healing but resist the painful process that reveals the wound.

I wanted freedom, and I got it, not through escape, but through stillness. I asked for reinvention, and it came, not in a cabin retreat but in a silent chair no one paid attention to.

The salary I once saw as meaningless became the very wheat I almost cursed.

Now, I’m not begging for a different life.

I’m gathering the scattered grains. Carefully. Patiently.

Because I believe that, just like the beggar, that somewhere in this struggle… there’s gold waiting to be found.