"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."     

- Keyser Söze

 

Things make sense until they don't. But the dangerous part isn't the moment they stop making sense. It's the stretch of time before that, when things have already changed and nothing looks any different. No one hides it from you. No one needs to. You convince yourself.

 

A room settles into a rhythm. Positions form. You get a sense of who matters, what direction things are moving in, and where you fit into all of it. For a while, it works. Your decisions feel right. Your approach makes sense. And then something shifts.

 

For those of you I haven't met yet, my name is Ansh Jalan. I'm a Grade 12 IBDP student with a strong interest in economics and mathematics. Outside of committee, if I'm not on a squash court or somewhere behind a screen, you'll probably find me rewatching The Mentalist or trying, and occasionally succeeding, to get a card trick right.

 

But here's the thing about card tricks. They don't work because the method is complicated. They work because you're paying attention to the wrong thing. And by the time you realise that, the trick is already over. The Specialised Emergency Session on the Taiwan Strait works the same way. You walk in, you start building a picture of who's aligned with who, what the priorities are, what matters and what doesn't. Some of it will be right. Some of it won't.

 

The problem is not getting it wrong. It’s not realising that you have.

 

Because while you're still holding onto something that feels right, the room has already moved. Alliances have shifted. Priorities have changed. Conversations have gone somewhere else entirely, and by the time you catch up, you're no longer where you thought you were. Most delegates don't fall behind because they weren't sharp enough or because they didn't prepare. They fall behind because they mistook the room they walked into for the room they were standing in.

 

And when that happens, your instinct may be to overcorrect. To change your entire approach. To try to become the loudest voice in the room, or the most aggressive, or whatever seems to be working for someone else. But that's not adapting. That's just reacting. Some of you will lead from the front. Some of you will be the reason a bloc holds together when it shouldn't. Some of you will catch the one detail in a crisis update that everyone else skimmed past.

 

But adapting doesn’t mean trying to become someone else. Some of you will lead from the front. Some of you will be the reason a bloc holds together when it shouldn’t. Some of you will catch the one detail in a crisis update that everyone else skimmed past. What matters is recognising where you’re effective, and using it deliberately. Because the moment you start chasing what seems to be working for someone else, you lose track of what actually makes sense for you.

 

The delegates who stand out aren't the ones who have all the answers from the start. More often, they're the ones who are comfortable not having them yet. They hold their assumptions loosely. They pay attention to what changes, and they pay closer attention to when something that once made sense quietly stops.

 

In this committee, that shift won’t always be visible.

You’re dealing with a situation where sovereignty itself is contested, where multiple actors operate with different versions of legitimacy, and where external involvement adds another layer of uncertainty. As the committee progresses, new pressures will be introduced. Some will be obvious. Others won’t be. Information will be incomplete, incentives will shift, and what seems stable at one point may stop holding without warning.

 

And if you’re still trying to understand what just happened, you’ll miss what happens next.

 

"Look closely, because the closer you think you are, the less you will actually see." 

- J Daniel Atlas

 

Until August,

Ansh Jalan,

Director, 

The Special Emergency Session on the Taiwan Strait,

Cathedral Model United Nations, 2026.