I was ten when I learned that precision was possible.

My hometown. Summer afternoon. Paint shop wedged between the electronics store and the tailor, air thick with turpentine and promise.

The shopkeeper handed the shade card to my father.

He ran his fingers across the samples. Hundreds of them. Creams bleeding into golds, blues deepening into teals, each square a promise.

He stopped at one.

Aqua marine.

Not quite blue. Not quite green. Something in between that he couldn't name but recognised immediately.

Something perfect.

The shopkeeper took the card from his hand. Nodded once. Placed a white base tin under the machine.

He pressed buttons I couldn't see.

The machine whirred to life.

Yellow dropped in first. Then cyan. Then just a whisper of white.

Sixty seconds of mechanical precision.

He lifted the lid. Stirred once with a wooden stick. Held it up to the light.

Exactly the shade on the card.

Exact.

I stared at that tin like I'd witnessed something sacred.

Choose what you want.

Get exactly what you chose.

No gap between selection and reality.

No approximation. No "close enough." No disappointing version of what you imagined.

Just: precision.

That aqua marine went on my house walls.

But what went into me was something else entirely.

The belief that control was achievable through selection.

And I never forgot it.

You carried that lesson too.

Maybe not from a paint shop in a two-tier city. But somewhere. Somehow.

Through decades of consumer living.

Food ordering. Select meal. Receive meal. Exactly as described.

Clothes shopping. Pick size and style. Get size and style. Consistent every time.

Netflix scrolling. Choose thriller. Get thriller. Mood matched perfectly.

Thousands of selections. Thousands of deliveries.

Each one reinforcing the same truth: Choose well = Control outcome.

This isn't theory.

This is how you learned to move through the world.

Then I moved to a new city.

Everything unfamiliar. Everything needing selection.

New job. New faces. New rhythms to learn.

And I did what made sense.

I applied shade card logic.

Professional relationships: I selected for competence. Expected consistent delivery. When colleagues shifted priorities or revealed complexity I hadn't selected for, I felt confused.

This isn't what I signed up for.

Personal connections: I selected for traits. Stability. Intellectual curiosity. Emotional availability.

When people evolved beyond those initial presentations, when the stable person became restless, when the curious person became withdrawn…I experienced something close to betrayal.

Not dramatic. Not loud.

Just... quiet confusion.

I chose carefully. Why isn't this working?

Here's what I couldn't see then:

I was meeting people the way I met products.
Quick scan. Quick label. Quick expectations.

“Calm person.” “Ambitious person.” “Unreliable person.”

Efficient. Decisive.

And quietly incomplete.

I developed something I thought was a strength.

Pride in being opinionated.

Not arrogance. Certainty.

I knew what I wanted. Could articulate it clearly. Made decisions fast.

This felt like competence.

And with products? It was.

With people?

It was rigidity disguised as clarity.

The bonds that never bloomed:

How many connections died in the selection phase?

I'd meet someone. They didn't match my shade card criteria. I'd dismiss them.

The person who seemed too quiet? They carried depth I couldn't measure from across the room.

The colleague who seemed scattered? They thought in patterns I'd never encountered.

The friend who seemed surface-level? They held vulnerability I'd need years to access.

I optimised for known shades.

Missed the unmapped colours entirely.

And it didn’t fail loudly.

It failed quietly, as confusion, I kept blaming it on my “choices.”

Relationships that should have worked, didn't.

Connections that felt promising, faded.

People I chose carefully felt wrong six months in.

And I blamed my selection.

I must be choosing poorly.

Actually: I was choosing well…for products.

Using wrong framework entirely.

Here's what's actually happening:

Products are static entities.

Specifications fixed at the point of making.

You select aqua marine paint? You get aqua marine paint.

Today. Next month. Five years from now.

The tin doesn't evolve. The shade doesn't shift. The consistency is guaranteed.

This is what static means.

And selection works perfectly here.

People are dynamic systems.

Internal proportions unknown. Always shifting. Context-dependent. Not controllable through selection.

You meet someone calm. That calmness is real. You didn't imagine it.

But what you can't see:

What percentage calm versus anxious in their internal makeup?

What contexts shift that balance?

What healing, trauma, growth, regression happening beneath observable traits?

Three months in, they're different.

Restless where they were grounded. Distracted where they were present.

You feel confused. Betrayed, even.

This isn't what I chose.

You're right.

It isn't.

Because what you chose was a moment, not a specification.

A presentation, not a guarantee.

A shade they were showing, not a shade they are.

Here's the trap:

We interchange static objects and living beings without changing our approach.

Treat dynamic as static.

Treat evolving as fixed.

Treat alive as manufactured.

Then wonder why it doesn't work.

Products have catalogues.

You browse. You select. You know what you're getting.

People don't have catalogues.

You can't open someone up and see: 40% calm, 35% ambitious, 25% introspective.

Even if you could, those proportions would shift.

By Tuesday, it might be: 60% anxious, 30% withdrawn, 10% resentful.

Not because they're defective.

Because they processed something. Healed something. Encountered something.

Dynamic beings don't come with shade cards.

And here's what makes this invisible:

Selection works so completely with everything else.

99% of your selections deliver as expected.

The paint matches. The meal arrives. The show entertains.

So when you apply the same logic to people and it fails, you don't question the logic.

You question your selection.

I must have chosen wrong.

No.

You're using sophisticated skill in inappropriate context.

Competence in one domain becoming incompetence in another…invisibly.

You mastered selection logic through decades of successful application to products.

That mastery is real. Valuable. Deserved.

It just doesn't transfer.

Because products reward precision.

People require something else entirely.

Something your shade card thinking never taught you.

Products taught you precision.

People require presence.

You can't select your way into the second using tools from the first.

You already know where you're using shade card logic.

Where you're frustrated by evolution instead of welcoming it.

Where you're treating dynamic as static.

The trap isn't your fault.

Decades of conditioning created this.

But now you can see it.

And seeing changes what's possible.

Until next week,

love,

aayush

hustle peacefully!