The wind asked me who I was,
and I answered with a whisper,
changing shape as it passed through me.
When I was five, I wanted to be a fireman. Not because I understood fire or duty, but because I saw a picture of a man holding a soot-covered dog, cradled like a baby rescued from a burning home. He wasn’t smiling. He looked tired. Human. And I thought—that’s what I want to be. Someone who shows up when everything is falling apart.
Then I wanted to be an astronaut. Then a magician. A man who made pastries. A man who disappeared. Each dream lasted about a week, maybe two. My identity was a revolving door, and I greeted every version of myself with full belief.
I made a helmet out of paper and wore it everywhere. It made me feel safe, like my future was solid. But paper dissolves in the rain. And the day it fell apart on the walk home from school, I cried—not because I lost the helmet, but because I thought I’d lost the one thing that made me real.
Adulthood doesn’t arrive like a knock on the door.
It’s a slow peeling away.
You don’t become something—you unbecome all the things that didn’t last.
I’m older now. On paper, I’m supposed to know who I am.
But I still don’t.
And maybe that’s not a flaw.
Maybe that’s what it means to live in harmony with life itself.
Wabi-sabi teaches that beauty is not found in the polished or the permanent, but in the things that wear down gently, that become softer with time, that carry the marks of all they’ve survived.
A cracked bowl that holds warm soup.
A weathered hand reaching for one more try.
A dream that changes shape but still returns at night.
I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
I still haven’t grown up.
But now I see the charm in that. The quiet dignity of incompletion.
I no longer chase labels.
I just show up—some days tired, some days brave,
almost always unfinished.
Lessons from a Rain-Soaked Helmet
- Wholeness is not the absence of cracks, but the presence of care.
- You are allowed to be multiple things over time.
- Growing doesn’t mean becoming more defined. It means becoming more real.
Somewhere inside me, the boy still wears his paper helmet.
It’s torn now, patched up, held together with tape and memory.
But it fits better than it used to.
And when the wind asks who I am,
I smile and say:
Still becoming.
life 
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