"The World Is My Playground"

When Mia was seven, her father gave her a spinning globe. “The world,” he said, tapping a finger on the little blue sphere, “is much bigger than this room. Bigger than this city. And one day, you’ll see it all.”

At the time, she didn’t understand what he meant. Her world was the backyard, her school, and the neighborhood ice cream truck that sang a tinny tune every summer evening. But as she grew, so did her hunger for more—more skies, more languages, more faces, more stories.

By twenty-five, she had saved enough from part-time jobs and freelance gigs to buy her first plane ticket. One-way. Destination: nowhere specific. All she knew was that she had to go.

Her first stop was Lisbon. The cobbled streets, the scent of fresh pastries, the sound of fado drifting from old cafés—it was the start of something magical. She made friends without speaking the language. They taught her to laugh without words, to dance without music. And with every sunrise over a new city, her soul expanded.

She wasn’t running away. She was running toward.

From Portugal to Peru, Nepal to Norway, Mia learned the art of presence. She slept under a thousand stars in the Sahara, traded stories with monks in Bhutan, and swam with turtles in the Philippines. She got lost in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, only to find herself sipping tea with strangers who felt like family.

She journaled everything. Not just places, but moments. Like the time she helped an old woman carry groceries through a monsoon in Sri Lanka, only to be invited in for the best curry she’d ever had. Or the little boy in Kenya who held her hand and called her “rafiki” – friend.

The world wasn’t perfect. It was raw, messy, loud, and sometimes cruel. She saw poverty, pollution, and injustice. But even in the darkest corners, she found light—in a smile, a shared meal, a helping hand. Humanity, she realized, was the same everywhere: people loving, struggling, dreaming, surviving.

Each experience added a new layer to her being. She wasn't the same girl who left home with wide eyes and a backpack. She had become a mosaic of all the places she’d touched, and all the people who had touched her.

Years passed. One day, while watching a sunset in Patagonia, Mia thought of that old globe. She remembered spinning it endlessly as a child, letting her finger land randomly. Back then, those countries were just names. Now they were memories.

A group of children ran past her, laughing in Spanish. One tripped and fell, and Mia rushed over, brushing the dust from his knees. He looked up at her and smiled—a pure, honest smile that reminded her of her own beginnings.

She realized then that she had made the world her playground—not in the childish sense, but in the truest one. She had explored it with curiosity, interacted with it with joy, and treated it with respect. Just like a child does with a favorite game, she had cherished it.

Eventually, Mia returned home—not because she was tired of traveling, but because her definition of “home” had changed. Home wasn’t a place. It was everywhere. And she carried pieces of it inside her.

She began teaching travel writing at a small community college. Her students didn’t always understand her stories. Some rolled their eyes. Others leaned in. But she didn’t try to impress them. She only tried to pass on what her father had told her, what life had proven true:

"The world is bigger than you think. But don’t be afraid of it. Love it. Explore it. Let it shape you."

And in the quiet moments, when the classroom emptied and the sun dipped behind the horizon, she’d close her eyes and feel the breeze of a thousand places on her skin.

Because the world had been her playground.