The Path That Leads Nowhere

I took a wrong turn while walking to the grocery store this morning. I usually stick to the main road, the one with the steady hum of traffic and the familiar shop windows. But today, I ducked into a narrow alleyway just to escape the wind. It was quiet, almost startlingly so. The walls were close enough to touch on both sides, and the path twisted in ways I couldn’t predict. I stopped worrying about the milk I needed or the time on my watch. For a few minutes, I was completely lost in a place that didn’t ask anything of me. We spend so much of our lives trying to get from one point to another, always looking for the most efficient way forward. But there is a strange, quiet magic in being somewhere that feels like it was built for wandering rather than arriving. When was the last time you let yourself get lost without checking your phone for the way back home?