Forgotten Letters – Friday from Ugarit

Episode IV

In Ugarit, the sea meant waiting. Ships entered and left the harbor carrying cedar wood, metals, and purple-dyed fabrics — and even before the goods were exchanged and the merchants’ words intertwined like nets, there was a moment of pause.

On their tablets, the scribes recorded names and quantities, yet between one line and the next there remained an invisible space — a moment in which one listened. It was not only a matter of trade or negotiation, but of recognizing that every name inscribed in clay was a face, just as every number was a promise.

The city of Ugarit lived by commerce, but not by goods alone. There, trust was exchanged — and trust, like grain, required patience to grow, passing even through less promising seasons.

There is a lesson hidden in those ancient negotiations: not everything of value is visible at first glance. Some agreements mature slowly, like ink drying on fresh clay. If you are too quick to touch it, it smudges.

In our own lives, too, there are inner harbors — places where new thoughts dock, unexpected encounters arrive, possibilities that ask for space. Yet not everything must be decided at once. Some choices need time to settle, like the silt the sea patiently lays upon the shore.

The scribes understood this: writing was a definitive act. For this reason, before engraving, they observed, listened, and verified. Once the word was carved, memory was shared.

Today, Friday, pause for a moment before engraving your decisions into the stone of habit. Ask yourself whether you have listened enough, whether you have allowed silence to do its work. Not everything that arrives must remain, and not everything that lingers is lost.

When the sun set over the harbor and the shadows stretched between the warehouses, the city slowed. What remained was the gentle sound of water against the docks and the scent of salt-soaked wood. It was in that hour that a simple truth became clear: what crosses the sea changes form, but does not lose its substance.

Next Friday we will return once more among the ancient stones, to discover how what seems like passage becomes root, and how every waiting holds a silent transformation.

For we too, like the ships of Ugarit, are made to depart and to return — and in every return we leave a mark that makes us different from who we once were.