I used to chase the wind.

Not because I thought I could catch it - even as a child, I knew better - but because moving felt better than standing still. The world always seemed to be in motion, loud and fast, filled with people who knew exactly where they were going. I ran because I didn't want to be left behind. I ran because I was afraid of the silence that came with stopping.

When I was little, I spent long afternoons at my grandmother's house in the countryside. Her backyard stretched into an open field, the kind that felt endless. I'd run through it barefoot, arms spread wide like wings, pretending I could lift off and soar. The wind was my companion then. It wasn't just air - it was laughter, freedom, the thrill of something greater calling me forward.

But the years moved on, as they always do.

The field gave way to pavement. Freedom was replaced by deadlines. Laughter turned into noise. Somewhere along the way, I stopped chasing for the joy of it and started running out of desperation. I chased after validation from people who didn't really know me. I chased love from those who were never mine to begin with. I ran after success defined by everyone but myself.

I knew, deep down, that none of it would fulfill me. Still, I ran.

Until one rainy afternoon.

The sky was a dull grey, the kind of color that presses down on your spirit. I had just walked out of a meeting that ended, like many others before it, with a polite no and a firm handshake. I was soaked, tired, and disappointed - but mostly, I was empty.

Then I saw her.

A little girl - no older than six - standing on the sidewalk with her arms stretched toward the sky. She was spinning, laughing, letting the drizzle paint patterns on her cheeks. She wasn't rushing. She wasn't chasing anything. She was just there - alive in the moment, letting the wind wrap around her like an old friend.

And just like that, I remembered.

Not the meeting, not the missed opportunity - but that feeling. The one I used to know. Of joy. Of movement without expectation. Of simply being enough.

I stopped chasing that day. Or maybe I just changed what I was chasing.

I still feel the wind tug at me sometimes. It whispers like it always did: Come find me. But now I smile and let it pass. Because I understand something I didn't back then - that the wind isn't meant to be caught. It's meant to remind us that we're alive. That we can still move, even when we're unsure. That hope can live in the chase, even if we never arrive.

So yes, sometimes we chase the wind knowing it will not get us anywhere.

But in the running, in the reaching, in the remembering - we find ourselves.