Today I forgot my phone, wandered endlessly, got lost, walked without direction.
I kept thinking we’re not afraid of disconnection; we’re afraid of not knowing what comes next.
But because I didn’t know, I ended up somewhere I was never meant to pass by.
When I finally got my phone back and walked home along a quiet street, I passed a small market. One booth pulled me in instantly like gravity.
The artist there didn’t just draw animals. She drew entire worlds: cut-open houses with staircases looping everywhere, tiny creatures living their chaotic, funny, perfectly ordinary lives.
A newsletter made by animals for animals. A whole apartment full of personalities.
I couldn’t look away.
Then she told me, very calmly, that she is actually a 400-year-old raccoon writing a book combining 12 animal perspectives. It will take her many years to finish.
In that moment, I felt an instant kinship. Like meeting someone who also carries multiple lifetimes inside one body.
She has a long-suffering book; so do I. Two strangers, walking different roads, yet strangely parallel.
When I left, a voice drifted down the street singing: “You light me up.”
That one line just one unexpectedly made my eyes sting.
I scanned the QR code to donate and only then noticed the singer’s face was deformed. Yet his voice was whole, full, radiant.
And I suddenly understood something absurdly true: even kindness now requires a phone.
If I hadn’t forgotten my phone today, I wouldn’t have met the raccoon-artist. Wouldn’t have found that secret little universe. Wouldn’t have heard that boy’s voice. Wouldn’t have cried at a single melody.
So now I realize I wasn’t afraid of uncertainty; I was afraid of where it might lead me.
But today it led me somewhere soft, somewhere bright.
It illuminated my projection of the day. And for a moment, I felt as if the invisible hand of the universe nudged me on purpose.