Pack light, live full!
Attention! What we notice in the world becomes our world 🌻
This semester, during the first lecture of synthetic chemistry, my professor put Gandhi’s famous words on the opening slide: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Despite having heard this quote many times before, it struck me at that moment, and I wrote it down in my journal, underlining the word “Be.”
Perhaps non-coincidentally, last week after graduating from the University of North Carolina (with a degree in Chemistry), I independently received two cards with Gandhi’s same words: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
What are the odds?
Improbabilities aside, this double occurrence made me smile inside and out. How wonderful that two friends wanted to share such a profound quote? How wonderful that I give off that kind of energy? Those 10 words and the magic of coincidences deeply comforted me. A mantra and a moment of reassurance really are the best graduation gifts!
So, how have I changed since college? I think it boils down to the word I most recently chose to underline: Be. Four or even two years ago, I would have underlined change, wish, or world. But I now appreciate that changes, wishes, and worldly impact are all consequences of how we choose to Be. Being is the source of transformation.
This subtle shift in attention, from external action to internal being, is the heart of my growth.
My life from North Carolina fits into a suitcase, a carry-on, a backpack, and a multi-layered-travel-day outfit. It always felt like more than enough. Maybe because I know each item and I remember its stories. Many days, when I open my closet, I feel an explosive delight for all that I have.
Having lived joyfully from a compressed inventory, I feel no pull towards the alternative. I love the simplicity and the adaptability. I love finding pleasure through thankfulness instead of novelty. I like that I can wear all the jewellery I own, that each item gets thoroughly adored before it’s replaced, that my consciousness is happy at this baseline. It feels like freedom.
Because I keep my quota to a suitcase, books circulate after I read them, clothes find homes after I outgrow them, items are either intentionally incorporated, or intentionally shared.
Because of this “constraint” I have learned that the only thing better than having something you love, is gifting something with love. I experience a high like nothing else when “my things” become “our things” flowing around my communities.
There is a reason Gandhi’s quote starts with Be the change and not Have the change. Too often, we mistake possessions or qualifications for the key to unlocking our potential (or happiness). But you don’t need an iPad to be a good student, nor an engineering degree to engineer something remarkable. You don’t need a Michelin star to cook a delicious meal, nor a passport to explore uncharted territory (how much of your home country do you know?). Tools can help (accelerate), but they are never the root mechanism for our aspirations.
By focusing less on what I have and more on who I can be, I can tap into a freedom to create, to solve, and to grow without waiting for external validation or the perfect tools. How we live life is our choice.
I have been describing how it feels to graduate as a “soft landing.” I feel no resistance, no need for fireworks, not even a craving for closure. I feel I have relished, enjoyed, adapted, explored, loved, and learned to the best of this era’s happenings. Having done so fully, my heart is content, there is no turbulence, and l feel loaded with memories without a greed for anymore in the format of “college”. Others are coming!
This perspective is grounded in the understanding that nature has no rigid lines. Phases like university are human constructs—useful, but not definitive. They mark sketched transitions, not terminations. The end of university is more like the beginning of lifelong friendship, learning, and happiness. The lines are blurry, the gift is great, and from this reality, the landing feels soft — or really, not like a landing at all, just another good day in a good life.
I credit much of this perspective to daily meditation. It is hard to overstate how 10-20 minutes a day of careful attention compounds over the years. The dedicated minutes of practiced awareness are a training ground for cognizance that reverberates through all other moments of the day. In particular, my meditation practice has unlocked:
An ability to begin again in any given moment (extremely refreshing)
An ability to recognize emotions as temporary appearances in consciousness; not overwhelming forces
A cultivation for space—for clearer thoughts, gentler choices, and acceptance; generally, letting things come
An ability to decipher constructs from choice
Above all, loving-kindness towards myself, my world, strangers, and the world
In the blurriness of endings and beginnings, this practice reminds me that so much of life is a choice. We can react unconsciously, or we can decide to engage with awareness and intention. Our quality of life rests on how we use this valuable resource of attention — because what we pay attention to becomes what we centre our lives around.
One of the many gifts from meditation has been sharpening my ability to observe, and by extension, appreciate.
As I was packing up my room, I stumbled upon a postcard I bought while in Denmark. The painting is part of the famous David Collection and I think I might be the only person in the world who upon looking at it is immediately reminded of the rolling hills of Kibezi, Burundi.
It is an obscure association to connect an artwork from 1847 to a village of 100 people in East Africa. What are the odds? Improbabilities aside, this kind of connection feels like a gift — like the world is not so disparate — how wonderful that I can so potently connect two beautiful places? How wonderful that in doing so, I feel so moved?
And it makes me wonder: how much of life passes unnoticed because we don’t stop to look? A postcard, seemingly insignificant, can be a touchpoint—a way to trace the connections between places, time, and within myself.
A Danish postcard unearthed while packing, 10 words on a powerpoint slide, the everyday sweaters I’ve worn and loved; a life marked by attention creates a fulfilled state of being from the little things. There’s no need to check another bag.
One of the most meaningful parts of my final months at UNC has been the Carolina Global Food Program, better known as EATS 101. It was an honors seminar with 14 seniors centered around topics in food and culture, with twice-weekly seven-hour discussions over dinner, and a group trip to France. It has been the highlight of my formal education—an experience that, in many ways, was a meditation on attention.
EATS taught me the gift of communal presence. We sat around the same tables, week after week, sharing meals, thoughts, and silences. It’s rare to have so many extended dinners with the same group of people outside of family, and it taught me a core truth: gathering around food is about sharing. And what’s the most valuable item to share? Attention. Fostering a collective feeling of: there is no where but here that my mind wants to be.
Our trip to France emphasized this theme of attention in a way I’ll never forget. Visiting the three-star Michelin restaurant Troisgros, I watched in awe as a chef used tweezers to plate a salad. Tweezers! The precision, care, and meticulous focus that went into arranging a single dish were staggering. And there were 16+ dishes! It was a level of attention that bordered on reverence—an understanding that even the smallest angle between microgreens mattered when creating something beautiful. It was food turned into art! Paired with the incredible service, atmosphere, flavours, wines, and conversation, this meal was 7 hours of channeling (jet-lagged) attention towards a truly unique life experience. I still can’t really tell good wine from bad, but I can confirm that Troisgros certainly had the good stuff! ⭐️⭐️⭐️
My final project for the class was a 75-page paper called Feeding Everyone. What started as an exploration of global fertilizer supply chains turned into a guiding philosophy for my life aspirations.
I’ll share it publicly soon (email me if you’re curious), but what was most interesting about this paper was how it unraveled. Writing it felt natural—like tracing a thread of everything I’d been paying attention to throughout the last ~10 years. The objective of feeding everyone is about noticing the needs of others, and at a societal scale, requires thoughtful (technological) scale-up. Here is a snippet from the introduction:
As I have travelled and witnessed the universal drive to nourish, I have come to understand that feeding everyone requires more than goodwill; it demands infrastructure, resources, and strategic coordination. While sharing a meal may be instinctual, sustaining global food supplies is complex in design. This paper explores the invisible foundations of the food system from a technological perspective, with a focus on fertilizer. I hope to uncover the blueprint for a global strategy to feed everyone.
This paper is inspired by my mom who built a life how she makes her bread: from scratch, with love. And my dad, her incredible life partner, a vegetarian engineer, and a natural contrarian, who taught me to never stop questioning the status quo. I am profoundly grateful for the life my parents enabled for me and my brother in Canada. I am thankful for my dad’s praises of my ambition and my mom’s praises of my kindness. They have taught me to have faith in good people and technology. While this paper is my final piece of work at The University of North Carolina, I see it more of a launchpad for the rest of my life’s work: crafting societal infrastructure that ultimately feeds everyone.
So who do I want to be? I want to be someone with a mission to feed everyone. In two ways: creating infrastructure in society to support this mission, and also running a home that is a revolving door for guests and dinners. And from this dual being, I believe the change I wish to see in the world will emerge. Maybe that is why my formal education feels like such a soft landing: because my final university paper feels like just the prologue to the rest of my life.
Up next I’m packing light (1 check-in suitcase again ;) to move to NYC! I’ll be an investment banking analyst on the industrials team at Santander CIB! 💗 Super excited for this move to the big apple :)
—Isabella Grandic
when you speak of attention, i think of the writings of simone weil and mary oliver. i love seeing glimpses of life through your eyes. to breathe and to be. thank you for nourishing the world with your love and light. <3