Closing the Laptop

-Karthik Gurumurthy

You know that thing where you’re twenty-something and someone disagrees with you online, and suddenly it feels like a personal mission to win? You type out the perfect comeback. You refresh to see if they responded. You replay the whole exchange in your head later, thinking of better things you could’ve said.

That’s not really about the argument. That’s about needing to be seen as right. As smart. As impressive. We spend so much of our younger years chasing that feeling, approval, agreement, being the one who “won” the conversation, like it actually proves something about who we are.

Here’s the thing though: it doesn’t. And most people figure that out eventually, usually the hard way.

Fast forward a few decades, and picture that same person, now in their fifties, reading a comment that completely disagrees with them. And instead of typing anything back, they just… close the laptop. Not because they ran out of things to say. They have plenty to say. They just don’t need to say it anymore. They don’t need the other person to agree, or admit they were wrong, or give them that little hit of “I won.”

That’s peace. Not winning every argument, but not needing to win it in the first place.

And honestly, that shift, from “I need the last word” to “I don’t need a word at all”, might be one of the most freeing things a person can ever learn. Not because they stopped caring about anything. But because they finally stopped needing everyone else to agree with them just to feel okay about who they are.

Protecting that kind of peace? That might be the most underrated skill there is.