I am in China, fumbling my way around –and laughing at myself.
This version of me is new. Or maybe old. Or maybe the one that was always there but never given much air.
In my responsible past, perfection was the game. I wanted everything I touched to be right. Vacations meticulously planned. Code polished down to the smallest edge case. If something went wrong, I felt like I had gone wrong.
But here –on this journey– I am making mistakes. Constantly.
And it is all… fine.
I walk five times farther than the map app says I should, because at some point I stop trusting it, start trusting myself, and end up lost anyway. I buy a printed ticket for a theatre show, tuck it safely away, and two minutes later cannot find it forcing a sheepish walk back to the box office to ask for a reprint like a child who lost their homework.
I drop my camera off the side of a cliff because I unscrewed the wrong side. I try to take the perfect selfie and completely miss the background I was aiming for.
I book a train to the wrong city because I assume autocomplete knows my intentions better than I do. I get on a high-speed train fifteen cars away from my actual seat and have to walk the entire length of the train, squeezing through crowded aisles, backpacks brushing strangers, apologizing in every language I don t speak.
At every turn, I am my own comedy factory.
And instead of tightening –instead of spiralling into frustration or self-blame– I laugh. Out loud sometimes. Alone. In public. Probably confusing everyone around me.
There was a time when mistakes felt expensive. When being responsible meant being flawless. When I believed that competence was loveable and imperfection was a liability.
But here, none of that holds.
No one cares that I am clumsy. No one is keeping score. The world does not collapse because I got it wrong.
In fact, the world keeps opening.
Each mistake becomes a story instead of a failure. Each wrong turn becomes part of the day instead of a stain on it. I am not trying to prove anything here –not to strangers, not to the past version of myself.
I am allowed to be human.
Messy. Lost.
Laughing. Learning.
I don’t need this journey to be perfect. I just need to be present for it.
And for the first time in a long time, that feels like enough.
“You are what you choose to be.”
— The Iron Giant (1999)
