My thumb moves on its own.
Scroll.
Scroll.
Scroll.
The light from the screen reflects against the window and across my eyes. Every headline feels like a repetition.
The system is failing.
The system is collapsing.
The whole system is rigged.
Reform the system.
Burn the system down.
System.
System.
System.
My thumb stops scrolling as the song catches me. The lyrics rise softly in my headphones, a familiar line
“I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles,
it is a very, very mad world”
Gary Jules sings Mad World in a way that feels both tired and honest. The melody reaches past the screen and lands in my thoughts before I even notice.
I put the phone on the table, screen down.
The blue light disappears, leaving only the warm glow from the candle in front of me.
Outside, rain slashes against the street.
A man buries his face deeper into his scarf.
A woman folds herself inward to escape the cold.
A small boy in yellow boots jumps into a small pool of rainwater with such joy that the water rises in a perfect arc. His mother fights with an umbrella and with him, her words swallowed by the wind.
Inside, everything feels softer.
The chaos of the street seems to disappear the moment the café door closes behind people.
The air is warm with the smell of coffee and melted chocolate.
Rain slides down the window in front of me in long silver lines, turning the city into a blur of light and movement.
A girl sitting near the entrance warms her hands around a ceramic mug.
She looks at the door.
Then at her phone.
Then at the door again.
She takes a small sip, as if she does not want to disturb her own patience.
A couple sits at another table.
They do not check their phones.
They do not speak.
Their eyes remain locked on each other, as if the rest of the world has faded out of the frame.
A waitress moves between tables like she is dancing, smiling mostly with her eyes. Behind the counter, a barista leans over the coffee machine, fully focused, as if he is running a small experiment in his own corner of the universe.
I close my eyes.
A breath in.
A breath out.
When I open them again, I reach for my coffee, take a sip, taste the warmth, then set it aside. I know it will get cold, the same way it always does when the keyboard wins and the coffee loses.
I pull my laptop from my bag.
I put on my glasses.
The screen glows to life.
A blank document.
A blinking cursor.
I type one word.
SYSTEM.
I want to unpack it. To sit with it.
To think, to feel, to understand.
I decide to let the piano in the song guide my fingers and lead my thoughts. Let my heart speak before my mind interrupts.
The word pulls me backward in time.
When I was a child, system meant a rule my father created for me.
If I wanted ten Syrian pounds to buy candy, I had to score full marks in exams ten times in a row. One mistake and the count returned to zero.
It felt like a game and a mountain at the same time. Ten perfect scores for ten pounds.
A small rule that taught me structure, patience, reward, and the sting of starting again.
When I became a teenager, system meant something new.
It meant winning language competitions and math competitions.
It meant memorising poetry and collecting enough votes from classmates to become the class captain.
I loved being the captain. I loved the small badge on my school uniform. I loved standing in front of the school and giving morning instructions to hundreds of students.
I felt I was part of something larger than me.
When I entered university, system changed again.
It became a schedule I had to bend so I could work two jobs and still survive.
It meant learning which classes I could skip and which ones I could not risk missing so that I could pay my rent and pay for my education.
My major was engineering. I was good at it, but my imagination kept drifting toward the worlds I touched through my jobs. I worked on marketing and public relations, took photographs, helped with small cinematography projects. Those places felt alive. They had voices and faces and movement.
After a few years, I left engineering and moved to social sciences.
I realised I loved people more than engines, waves, and equations.
Then I entered the humanitarian and development sector, and system grew teeth.
Suddenly it meant documents, rules, policies, framework, procedures, and tools that felt heavier than the aid boxes we were trying to move.
It meant risk registers, logframes, audit trails, and long templates that could decide the fate of a project before a single family was reached.
It meant compliance with donors, and IASC. It meant SPHERE. It meant organisational policies.
The system of the sector felt like it was made of documents. There was a document for everything. A guideline for something, a process for another thing, a handbook for a third, and best practice for everything else. After a while, my head started to hear all of it as noise.
My engineering instincts would not leave me. To make sense of the system, I needed to treat it like a machine and understand its mechanics. I began to break everything I read down to basics, to first principles. I took long policies and dissected them into small parts. What goes in. What happens in the middle. What comes out. Which part moves which part. Where the power flows and where it gets stuck.
My photography background helped in a different way. I could remember shapes and images more easily than paragraphs and text, so I started to draw what I was reading. Boxes, arrows, circles, messy sketches on paper and on whiteboards. I wrote words inside them or sometimes left them as pictures. I borrowed the simple rules from my childhood systems. There is always a cause. There is always an effect. Sometimes there is a reward. Sometimes there is a cost. I would ask myself what is the input here, what is the output, who carries the weight in the middle, and who feels the impact at the end.
To others, my whiteboard or notes were chaos. Colleagues would tilt their heads or laugh, saying they could not make sense of it. For me, that same chaos was structure.
Inside those circles and arrows I felt like an architect. I was seeing the system, mapping the links in a way my mind could hold. It was my own quiet version of tools like Fishbone analysis, Six Sigma or the Pareto principle. Beneath any technical language the process was simple: start from first principles, break a system apart, then use images to stitch it back together.
And that is how I studied systems. I practiced all of it. I taught all of it. I shared what I learned. Many times, I even defended it.
I defended the documents.
Even when I saw them hurting people.
Hurting my teams.
Hurting me.
Even when I saw decisions made from rooms that never saw a country operations.
Even when I was told to follow rules that had never met the people they were supposed to protect.
The more time I spent in the sector, the more the system felt heavy, built on assumptions rather than facts.
I saw how bureaucracy became a shield.
Forms and procedures were used like armour, protecting institutions from risk while leaving communities exposed to it.
Spreadsheets knew every cent in a budget but forgot the names of the people the budget was supposed to serve.
How rooms listened more carefully to certain tones of English, certain titles, to careers that began in certain capitals.
The system did not need to say the word racist out loud for the pattern to be clear.
It lived in how local organisations were treated as helpers, while international organisations were treated as leaders.
It lived in who was trusted with strategy and who was kept at the level of implementation.
It lived in who was forgiven for mistakes and who was quietly replaced.
I kept believing anyway. I kept hoping the system could be repaired.
Part of that hope came from how my own path kept expanding, the leaders I met and the communities we served.
I moved between different corners of this world we call the sector.
I worked with United Nations agencies that carried huge mandates and very heavy bureaucracy.
I worked with large international NGOs that could move millions through a single grant and still struggle to move a single decision.
I worked with local organisations whose entire annual budget was smaller than the cost of one workshop in a capital city.
I worked with the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, with its deep roots and rituals.
I worked with donor institutions that could, with one signature, decide what survival would look like for thousands of people.
Every move felt like stepping into a new version of the system.
Over time, I also began to see that system was not only made of these different versions. It also meant very different things to different people.
My thoughts take me to a time when I was in a country where, in the last hour of my visit to a camp in a very hard to reach area, I wanted to meet the camp coordinator. I went to his office to say hi and to appreciate the work done by his team. I entered and saw a large whiteboard in front of him with three numbers written on it. After shaking his hand, that was my first question.
“What is this.”
He told me. One number for the people in need. One number for the kits we have. One number for the kits we still need.
That was his system. Three numbers that held thousands of lives outside that office. Three numbers that described the whole reality. Who is in need. What we have. What is still missing.
We spoke and spoke, and I promised him that I would take these three numbers to the highest humanitarian leadership level in the country. A few weeks later, I found myself sitting in the humanitarian coordination team, with the leaders from UN, NGOs and other representatives. I mentioned the camp. I mentioned the people. I mentioned the stories and the numbers. One of the reactions from the leadership was about funding fatigue, about how even after all the trips to Geneva and New York, the struggle was still there.
That was the system too. Taking the reality of a camp to the global stage, wrapping it in words, reports, evidence, and proposals, pitching it, and trying to connect two very different worlds.
Some people do not trust systems at all. Some trust them too much.
I often find myself thinking about another time in another country. I was in an area office. When I entered the supply chain team leader’s office, I would sometimes find him sitting on the floor with tens of pages spread in front of him, a large green tea thermos beside him, and hours of him looking at each paper again and again. I would then see the human resources and administration colleagues staying in the office after working hours, printing and sorting file after file. One day I went to the basement of the building and found hundreds, maybe thousands, of papers. It was a full archive room, only mountains of papers and files.
I did not fully understand why all of that was needed, because for me, I only received a notification on the software. All I had to do was check the attachments and approve or reject, or add comments. For me, it felt straightforward. I was not sure why my team had to do so much extra work.
So I asked my team. They told me they did not trust that the software, the system, would keep the documents, so they printed everything and kept it aside.
Later, when I wanted to understand that software better, I received one email. It was a letter from higher management. I opened it and saw just one page, but it was full of words with hyperlinks. I clicked one. Then another. Then another. A manual. Then a video. Then an online learning module.
In total, it was more than eight hundred pages of manuals and guidelines. I knew I could not ask my team to trust something I did not fully understand myself. To truly support them, I had to carry the same weight they did. So I read everything. Late evenings turned into early mornings as I went through it, page by page, the useful parts, the repetitive parts, and the long sections that felt completely disconnected from reality. It was slow and exhausting, but it showed me exactly what the system was demanding from them. It also gave me the language I needed to train others, to question it with confidence, and to start rebuilding a small bridge of trust between my team and the system they were forced to live with.
I also think systems can be a way of seeing things.
I have a friend who works in community projects. She never uses words like framework or operating model. For her, life is made of safe spaces and unsafe spaces.
When I talk about a new program, she does not ask about the budget or the logframe. She asks a different question. Will people feel safe enough to walk into this place.
If I talk about a new policy, she asks whose day will become easier and whose day will become harder because of it. If I mention new funding, she asks which community groups will actually feel it in the end.
Where I see workflows and roles, she sees chairs in a room, who sits where, who feels welcome, and who never comes back after the first visit. That is her system. A way of reading the same reality through the map of safety, dignity, and who can breathe easily in a space.
System is a word that carries a lot inside it.
And I remember clearly when my perspective on it fully changed.
That change began with a short conversation with one of my managers.
Before I met him for the first time, I had already heard many things about him.
People spoke about him with respect. They said he listens. They said he sees what others miss. They said he genuinely cares and protects his team.
Others were not so kind. They said he is too political, too slow. Old school and privileged.
I do not care much about labels. I like to build my own opinion about people.
Life also taught me that we are angels in one story and demons in another.
Still, I was curious. So I searched for him online.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing flashy. Just a man who had walked in many worlds. Someone who had done country operations and headquarters. Crossed functions, organisations, and roles.
That gave me a certain hope and respect.
I felt that maybe we would speak the same language of countries and functions, that he had seen different types of systems and there might be something in that I could learn from.
He hired me for my first headquarters role, and he was the first person I spoke to when I entered the building.
I arrived in headquarters like a storm wrapped in ambition and a desire for change.
I had rehearsed that moment for years.
I imagined myself as the fighter from operations arriving to shake the machine from the inside. I brought heat. Frustration. Old wounds. Years of being overlooked.
Stories of people who built and rebuilt even when the system left them behind.
We sat down for our first conversation.
He asked me something he had already asked during the interview. I think he knew that in the interview I had given the answer I thought he wanted to hear, and that there was more under it.
He asked why I came. Why HQ. Why this role. He asked what I hoped to do.
I spoke with years of accumulated frustration.
I spoke about my last deployment. I spoke about what we built and what we were denied. I spoke about policies that became walls between us and the people we served.
Processes that weighed us down instead of lifting us up.
How HR and the Code of Conduct, which were meant to protect people, sometimes protected the institution and left us exposed.
Rules that prioritised compliance over compassion.
I said the system was losing its way.
I said it crushed good people. It failed me. I said it broke us.
He did not move.
He simply nodded.
He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then looked back at me and said the sentence that changed everything.
System is people.
I froze. I did not want to argue, especially not in my first meeting, on my first day, with my new manager.
We continued the conversation, but the sentence stayed somewhere in the back of my mind.
When I finished my day and stepped outside, I kept thinking about it. I walked for hours that evening, through a city I did not know yet, on streets I had never seen before, in a Danish November cold that cut through my coat. I moved without a clear direction, only with that sentence in my head. System is people.
I turned it over and over again as I walked, testing it against memories, against faces, against meetings, against every rule and process I had ever resented.
By the time I found my way to my apartment, my feet were tired and my hands were numb, but something inside me had shifted.
For years I had fought a monster made of paperwork, and silence. And suddenly I saw faces.
The system had fears. It had insecurities. It had blind spots and childhood stories and private disappointments that shaped public decisions.
People built it.
People protected it.
People like me joined it, sometimes trying to change it, sometimes becoming part of it without noticing.
That sentence unlocked something inside me.
It made me curious about the person behind every decision.
The story behind every policy.
The fear behind every slow approval.
The pressure behind every cautious meeting.
The hope behind every reform that died halfway through.
Trying to understand people did not make me softer. It made me sharper.
It opened doors in my mind that had stayed closed for years. It changed the way I listened, especially to the ones I disagreed with. It taught me to search for the human before searching for the mistake.
That manager, in a short meeting and with a few simple words, gave me a new definition. A definition shaped by wisdom from his many years inside the system.
It was a truth I probably knew in theory, but had never really looked through.
Something I had felt in pieces, but never allowed myself to feel completely.
For a long time, I had treated systems as mechanics.
Organisation charts, workflows, chains of approval, templates, tools.
I would map inputs and outputs, trace where information entered and where decisions came out.
Understanding the mechanics helped. It gave me language. It gave me clarity. It gave me a way to see how pressure moved through an organisation and where it became stuck.
Then I began to pay more attention to how people looked at the system.
Who felt safe in it and who did not. Who trusted it and who feared it. Who used it as a shield and who experienced it as a door that never opened.
Seeing that made me turn the whole picture and study it from different angles.
Not just what the system did on paper, but what it did inside people.
That sentence he gave me showed me that mechanics are only the first layer.
Behind every flow chart there is a person who is tired, or afraid, or hopeful.
Behind every delayed approval there is someone who does not want to be the one who signs the risk.
And behind every rigid rule there is a story of something that went wrong once and frightened people into overcorrecting.
The structure matters. The documents matter. The processes matter.
But the heart of the system is people.
If we stop at the mechanics, we only fix the machine.
If we see the people inside it, we have a chance to change its soul.
And here is the part I keep telling myself since that meeting, since the day he gave me that sentence.
If system is people, then system can change.
If the things that shape our lives are created by human hands, then they can be reshaped by human courage.
Our problems are human made. Which means they can be solved by people.
This truth asks something from us. It asks us to listen with patience. To see the person behind the policy. To understand the story behind the mistake. To recognise the fear behind the slow decision. To remember that the system is not a machine. It is a collection of human beings trying, failing, learning, and sometimes carrying more than we know.
If system is people, then change begins with how we treat each other. With the conversations we choose to have. With the courage we choose to show. With the clarity we bring into the rooms where decisions are made.
We are not powerless. We are part of the thing we complain about. And we are also part of the thing that can transform it.
If system is people, then there is more hope than we realise.
Because people can change. People can learn.
People can choose differently. And so can we.
I sit back in my chair.
The song has moved to another track.
The candle beside me has burned so much lower. My coffee is cold.
Outside, the rain has become a mist. People walk past the window, shoulders a little more relaxed, their umbrellas closed as they walk.
I look around the café. The room has shifted. The girl near the door is gone, and the couple from the corner has disappeared as well.
New faces fill the tables now, each person carrying their own small system over coffee and conversation.
And then there is me, sitting behind my laptop, reflecting on systems and thinking of a sentence from my grandfather, who spent his life in public service.
When I was a child and complained about what other children had that I did not, he said it is not about what the family will do for you, it is about what you will do for the family. He said it is not about what the community will do for you, it is about what you will do for the community.
Today, in this café, with the last of my coffee growing cold and the word SYSTEM still at the top of the page, I feel how his words have followed me here.
It is not only about what the system does to us.
It is also about what we choose to do, with each other and within it.
About how we show up. How we care. How we refuse to turn away from the people inside the structures we say we want to change.
The candle flickers once, then steadies.
Outside, the city keeps moving.
I close my laptop with a sentence in my mind.
System is people.
And I am part of it.
