The silence was not about you

A woman in Dubai who sells hand-printed cushions online sends a careful quote to a new customer. Twelve covers, two fabrics, delivery in a week. The message is read. No reply. A day, then three.

It is easy to take that personally. Easy to decide the price offended him, or the photographs looked cheap, or something in her tone put him off, and to carry it around all week as a small wound.

But his silence was almost certainly there before her message arrived. A child unwell, a move postponed, a boss on his back, a hundred unread messages. Whatever is going on with him would be going on if she had never written. He is weather. She happened to send a message into it.

Only two things are worth asking about weather like that.

One is whether to keep standing in it. If a certain kind of buyer goes cold every time, or a certain marketplace breeds nothing but rushed, curt strangers, that is a place she can choose to spend less time. Staying out in a storm you could avoid is a decision.

The other question is harder, and it is the one that actually belongs to her. Somewhere downstream there is a courier she kept waiting outside a building, a printer she sent three sharp voice notes to at midnight, a supplier who has not heard a thank you in months. To them she is not a person with a reason. She is the bad mood they happened to stand next to.

She cannot do much about his week. She can decide, today, not to be someone else's bad weather.