As I was on my way to the main road that evening, I began thinking about my life—thinking, not worrying, please. My life in all its angles and unanswered corners. I was doing quiet arithmetic in my head, adding regrets, subtracting courage, dividing myself into the person I was and the person I hoped to become.

Then—thud.
A sudden weight. My foot.

I was snapped back to the present to find a little girl, no more than two years old, sprawled against my left foot. Time paused. My thoughts scattered.

I had seen her minutes earlier, walking ahead with her mother and another woman. Somewhere between passing them and passing my own thoughts, I had stopped seeing.

“Oh! Sorry, sorry,” I said, urgency clinging to my voice as I bent down, brushing dust from her clothes and fixing her tiny flip-flops with trembling fingers.
She responded with a baby’s grunt—her language for it’s okay. I forced a smile. Babies have a way of forgiving before you finish apologizing.

“Ẹ̀ ṣe ma. Ẹ̀ ṣe gan o! Thank you,” her mother said, gently reclaiming her daughter’s hand.

“Yes, ma,” I replied, my eyes lowering, my steps quieter as I walked away.

And as I continued down the road, it struck me: I hadn’t tripped the child with my feet—I had tripped her with my absence. My body was present, but my mind had wandered far ahead of me, careless of the small, living moments along the way.

Reflection:-

Sometimes, life doesn’t stop us with a shout.
It nudges us with a soft fall.

We spend so much time racing ahead—calculating futures, rehearsing failures, negotiating with fear—that we forget to be where our feet are. And in that absence, we risk hurting what is gentle, what is growing, what is innocent.

This was my reminder: slow down.
Be here.
Pay attention.

Not every lesson arrives as pain. Some arrive as a toddler on your foot, asking—without words—that you return to yourself.