The Morning the World Felt Soft Again
A gentle morning reflection where Sam Cooke drifts in like weather — a quiet reminder that change arrives softly, and the work ahead can be carried with calm, intention, and light.
By Rafi Mercer
There are mornings when the world feels a little softer, as though it’s loosened its grip just enough for you to breathe differently. Today was one of those. I woke with Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come humming at the edges of my mind — not the whole song, just the contours of it, the small fragments that carry more weight than full sentences ever could. “It’s been a long…” — that suspended place between effort and arrival.
I think I woke inside that suspension.
Building something every day — quietly, patiently — creates its own weather system. You move between calm certainty and small doubts, between the thrill of progress and the quiet exhaustion that comes from carrying a vision through months of unseen work. But today, the pressure eased. The air shifted. There was space again. Enough to hear things clearly.
Enough to hear myself clearly.
Sam’s voice slipped in the way truth often does: sideways, unplanned, but exactly on time. The way he leans into the word change — not pleading for it, not demanding it, just recognising it — feels oddly aligned with where I am. Tracks & Tales has crossed some invisible threshold. The work is no longer hypothetical. The numbers don’t lie. The audience is arriving. The idea is taking form in the way a coastline does from a ship at sea: slowly, then suddenly obvious.
And yet, I’m reminded this morning that growth doesn’t require force. It doesn’t need noise. It needs attention — quiet, consistent, humane attention. The sort you give to a record when you place the needle gently, letting the music rise at its own pace. The sort of attention I owe myself, too.
So I’m taking today gently.
Not slow — gentle.
There’s a difference.
Slow is resistance. Gentle is intention.
Gentle is knowing the work will be there when I arrive. Gentle is trusting that momentum doesn’t break when you breathe. Gentle is letting the day lead a little, instead of trying to bend it into a shape it was never meant to take.
And in that small act of stepping back, something becomes clearer: the path ahead isn’t a sprint. It’s a long arc of care. A long arc of craft. A long arc of showing up in a way that honours the sound you’re trying to build.
Maybe that’s why Sam is in my head today.
Not as a warning.
Not as nostalgia.
But as a reminder that a change — the right change — doesn’t arrive in a blaze. It arrives quietly. Softly. Like a song you didn’t choose but needed. Like a future leaning toward you.
Today, I listen gently.
Today, I trust the drift.
Today, I prepare — not by pushing harder, but by clearing space for what’s already on its way.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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