If I Missed That, I Would Have Never Achieved My Goal

The bus was late — again.

It was one of those sticky, summer mornings when everything feels slow: the air, the clock, even your hope. My interview was at 8:00 sharp. The kind of job my parents would be proud of — stable, predictable, with benefits that sounded like a promise of safety.

At 7:11 a.m., I was still staring down an empty street. The city was waking up: car horns, pigeons, impatient footsteps. I’d been preparing for this day for weeks — printed resumes, polished shoes, ironed shirt — but the bus was nowhere to be seen.

When it finally groaned to a stop, I nearly didn’t get on. It was packed. My shirt stuck to my back, and the smell of coffee and exhaustion filled the air. The only open seat was beside an old man wearing a faded brown hat and tapping his knee to some rhythm only he could hear.

I sat down anyway.

“Big day?” he asked without looking up.

“Interview,” I said. “One I can’t afford to miss.”

He chuckled softly. “Funny thing about missing things,” he said. “Sometimes the things you miss are the ones that save you.”

I smiled politely, pretending to check my phone. But his words stuck like a pebble in my shoe.

“Do you like what you’re interviewing for?” he asked after a pause.

I hesitated. “It’s a good job.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He looked at me then — eyes kind but sharp. “Son, I’ve worked forty years doing what I had to. Don’t make the same mistake thinking it’s what you want to.”

Before I could reply, he rang the bell and stood. “This is my stop,” he said. “Remember — missing one thing might be the best thing that ever happens to you.”

And just like that, he was gone.

When the bus stopped near the office, I didn’t move. The building loomed across the street, glass and gray, like it was built to swallow dreams whole.

I thought about the interview — the scripted answers, the polite smiles, the safe future. And then I thought about something else: a small design studio three blocks away, the one I’d passed a hundred times but never dared to enter.

I got off the bus. But instead of crossing the street to the office, I kept walking.

The studio door was open. Inside, sunlight spilled across sketchboards, coffee mugs, and chaos — the kind of beautiful mess that felt alive.

“Can I help you?” a woman asked from behind a desk.

“I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “But I’d like to show you something.”

I pulled out my notebook, filled with designs I’d sketched in secret — logos, posters, even an idea for a campaign I’d dreamed of making. She flipped through the pages in silence.

When she finally looked up, she smiled. “You’re good. Really good. We’re looking for interns, actually. Can you start Monday?”

I almost laughed — partly from shock, partly from relief.

That was three years ago.

Today, I’m the lead designer at that same studio. My work hangs in places I once only admired from the outside. And sometimes, when I’m walking to work, I see Bus 47 rumble past and think about that old man — about what he said, about timing, and about how fate hides in the smallest moments.

If I’d missed that bus, I’d have missed him.

And if I’d missed him, I’d have missed myself.