Sunbirds, Screens, and the Whisper Beneath the Roar

In Amman, during those early pandemic months, the streets fell eerily silent. No cars. Just the soft whirr of ceiling fans, the echo of our own footsteps in tiled apartments, and the melodic threads of Palestine sunbirds outside our windows. The world, once sprawling and tactile, shrunk into domestic corners and digital frames. Our lives became confined—yet oddly stretched—by the reach of Zoom and Teams, by voices piped into our homes from other continents, other timelines, other selves.

Every two weeks, I connected with Daniel—him in São Paulo, me in Amman. He’d recently stepped into a formidable new role: regional CEO of a major multinational. For him, the sky had never been the limit—it was merely the next territory. He was a rainmaker. A closer. A numbers guy with a string of MVP awards to prove it. The kind of leader whose hustle could bend metrics and move markets. His new playground stretched from the Gulf of Darién to the Tierra del Fuego. The whole hemisphere, his chessboard.

He carried the persona well: crisp suits, bullet-point clarity, no time for fluff. There was a “top-down, tough-guy, work-hard-play-hard” streak in him. Underperformers didn’t last. Weak links were cut. And yet—on our very first call—he surprised me.

“There’s a voice,” he said, “quiet, but persistent. It says this fear-driven stuff... it won’t last. Management by terror? It will blow up in my face.”

He said it casually, almost like clearing his throat. But I heard it. The whisper of wisdom. The first tremor of something deeper.

A few calls later, the armor cracked wider.

“Dominique,” he said, voice a little quieter than usual, “I’m scared shitless. I have to be number one. I can’t lose control. And I feel like I’m losing it already.”

There was no PowerPoint slide for that moment. No KPI to measure its weight. Just breath. Silence. Two screens facing each other across continents, time zones, and the layered architecture of masculine conditioning.

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That moment taught me something I’ll never forget:

Even the most decorated leader may be trembling inside their corner office.

And sometimes, the bravest thing a man can do is whisper.

Next: Why Does One Pain Echo Louder? A Dispatch from Amman

© 2025 Dominique Bel. Cardboard Wings: A Constellation of Becoming. All rights reserved.