I Found You Where I Wasn’t Looking
It was a Thursday.
The kind of day you don’t remember later. You were at the supermarket, tired, picking the wrong kind of apples. Someone next to you laughed — not at you, but at something entirely their own. You looked up. There was no reason to remember this, and yet… you do.
Sometimes, you find something in the middle of nothing.
Searching as a habit
We’re taught to look, to seek, to plan, to anticipate. Even in relationships – especially in relationships – we prepare ourselves like travelers: where am I going, what do I want, what should I expect?
There’s nothing wrong with this. The longing is real, and the effort can be honest, but sometimes, the looking becomes so intense that we stop seeing.
Or we only see what we already hoped to find.
Sideways encounters
Then, at an odd angle, someone arrives. Not like a thunderbolt, but like a quiet warmth you didn’t know you were missing ― not what you were looking for, maybe not even close. And yet, something in you becomes stiller in this presence.
It can be a person, an idea, or even a part of yourself you thought you had lost or outgrown. Recognition doesn’t come with a label.
Just a gentle click, like a puzzle piece turning itself around and fitting suddenly, silently.
The release of expectation
There’s something tender in not expecting. When you stop pressing reality to match your outlines, you might start to notice its curves. The way it breathes differently than you’d planned.
You don’t have to give up your dreams, but perhaps you can hold them lightly, like a kite — allowing the wind to take part.
What comes to you may not match your imagination. And still, it may be exactly what your deeper self has been waiting for — in silence, with patience.
Being found
And then, perhaps, you are the one being found, not in your polished version, not in your strongest hour. But as you are — distracted, imperfect, human.
There is a great gentleness in being seen not for trying, but for simply being.
Sometimes the most loving moment is when no one is trying to love — and yet love appears anyway. No strategy. No performance.
Just presence.
A quiet return
In the end, it may feel like you’ve arrived somewhere. But maybe you were never really gone. Maybe you simply looped around — through hopes and fears and careful intentions — to a place that was already waiting.
A place inside you or in someone else.
Or gently hanging in the air between two people who weren’t looking anymore.
You find what matters when it stops needing to be found.
And then — you don’t hold it, but it stays.
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