There was a time when I believed life moved in straight lines. If I made careful plans, if I worked hard enough, if I loved well enough, things would unfold as expected. I thought certainty was something you earned.

But life, it turns out, has never been interested in our neat expectations.

It bends. It swerves. It changes direction without warning. Doors close quietly. Others swing open when we’re not looking. The map we were following suddenly no longer matches the road beneath our feet.

At first, I resisted. I tried to hold things exactly as they were, gripping moments, people, and versions of myself that had already begun to shift. I mistook control for safety, and change for loss.

What I didn’t understand then was that change wasn’t arriving to take something away — it was arriving because life was still moving.

The only thing life truly guarantees is that it will not stay the same.

Recently, a friend challenged me to choose one word for this year — to let that single word influence one decision each day, no matter how small.

My word is allow.

Not push.
Not force.
Not prove.
Just… allow.

Allow change instead of resisting it.
Allow rest without guilt.
Allow joy in small, ordinary moments.
Allow myself to choose ease when I can.
Allow life to unfold without needing to control every bend in the road.

It’s a word that holds both softness and strength — the kind I’ve been trying to cultivate quietly in my life.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, I am learning to loosen my grip. To stop fighting the current and instead learn how to float, then swim. I am beginning to notice that happiness doesn’t disappear when plans fall apart — it simply changes shape.

It lives in smaller, quieter places. In adapting. In letting go of how things should have been. In meeting life where it is, rather than where I had hoped it would stay.

There is a strange peace that comes when you stop arguing with reality. When you allow yourself to grow into the new shape life asks of you. When you trust that even unpredictability carries its own kind of wisdom.

Life changes. Constantly. Unapologetically.

And when we stop fighting that truth — when we learn to bend instead of break — we discover that joy isn’t found in certainty at all, but in our willingness to move with the unfolding.