**The Gift of Getting Lost**

Sofia

Barcelona, 09:03 AM

The metro doors slide shut behind me, and I realize—too late—that I’ve boarded the wrong train. L4 instead of L2. My first instinct is to curse, to scramble for my phone and recalculate. But then I catch my reflection in the window: shoulders tense, jaw set, already bracing for battle with time.

Yavaş.

The word drifts back to me, soft as the morning light filtering through the graffiti-streaked tunnel. I exhale. So what if I’m late to the café where I’m supposed to meet Claudia? So what if my carefully planned morning unravels?

I stay on the train.

As we emerge above ground near Poblenou, Barcelona unfolds in unexpected angles—a laundromat with pink doors, a stooped abuela arranging figs on a folding table, a mural of a mermaid with subway tokens for scales. My fingers itch for my camera, but I resist. Some vistas aren’t meant to be captured, only witnessed.

When I finally arrive (thirty-seven minutes late), Claudia isn’t annoyed. She pushes a cortado toward me, steam still curling from its surface. “Te queda bien el desvío,” she grins. Detours suit you.

She’s right. The old Sofia would’ve treated wrong turns like personal failures. But the woman who sat on Süleymaniye’s steps, who learned to measure time in fig vendors and ferry wakes, knows better now. Getting lost isn’t the opposite of progress—it’s part of the path.

Later, walking home through El Raval, I notice how the afternoon light pools in the cracks between cobblestones. How the scent of frying churros mingles with jasmine. How my shadow stretches long and lean, no longer hurrying to outpace itself.

Aylin’s voice echoes in my memory: “You look for the wrong thing.”

Maybe the obstacles are the journey. The missed trains and coffee stains and blurry frames. The moments that refuse to be contained.

My phone buzzes—an editor asking if I’d consider covering Dia de los Muertos in Oaxaca. Normally, I’d agonize over logistics, over perfect pitches. Today, I type “Sí, con gusto” before I can overthink it.

Growth tastes like imperfect cortados and impulsive yeses. Like trusting that even wrong trains lead somewhere worth seeing.

—Sofia

Growth indicators

  • obstacle_development