What I learned from the Omanis

There are moments when keeping up with the news starts to feel like a burden. One headline leads to another and before long, everything feels uncertain. Conflict, disruption, instability. They build quietly, but heavily.

And then comes the question: what do you actually do with all of this? Do you pause your life? Do you prepare for the worst? Do you withdraw and wait it out? Or do you accept that much of what is happening sits far beyond your control?

The weight of recent weeks has not just been geopolitical. It has been personal. Conversations have shifted. Among the expat community in Oman, there is a growing unease, quiet but constant. Questions around job security, sudden restructuring, delayed decisions. Plans that once felt stable now feel temporary. People are beginning to think in shorter timelines, measuring their next move rather than their long-term future. It is not panic, but it is uncertainty and it lingers.

In Oman, however, there has always been a different way of looking at things. Not careless, not dismissive, just grounded. A quiet understanding that not everything can be managed and that life still has to be lived in the meantime.

I have spent more than a decade here, long enough for acquaintances to become friendships and for those friendships to shape perspective. I remember once, in the middle of a particularly uncertain period, asking an Omani friend how he stayed so calm. He simply shrugged and said, “What will happen will happen. Why carry it twice?” It stayed with me.

Which is why this might be the perfect moment to head up to Al Jabal Al Akhdhar. The rose season is brief, but it arrives with a kind of certainty that feels reassuring. Early mornings in the terraces, the steady rhythm of harvest, the scent of roses carried through the air, none of it competes with the noise of the world. It simply exists alongside it.

And in that space, something shifts. Your thoughts slow down. The urgency fades. You are reminded that not everything needs an immediate reaction.

For as long as I have known Omanis, there has always been a tendency to look at life with quiet optimism. Not because everything is easy, but because worrying about what cannot be controlled does not change the outcome.

Perhaps this moment, as uncertain as it feels, is an opportunity to lean into that mindset. After all, what is meant to happen will happen.

But inshallah and by God’s grace, we are still here and still able to live life as it should be lived.