Mischance arrives unannounced—
a stumble, a spill, a twist in the narrative
that no one asked for and no one could fully prepare for.
It is life’s abrupt punctuation mark,
where certainty turns into silence,
and plans are forced to bow before the unexpected.
When Fortune Fails to Smile
Mischance is not tragedy in its grandest form—
not always grief or devastation—
but something quieter,
a subtle unraveling of something once held firm.
The missed train.
The wrong turn.
The lost letter.
The meeting that didn’t happen because of the rain.
These moments often feel small in the telling,
but they are vast in their ripple.
The Humbling of Control
We are creatures who like to believe we steer our fate—
that effort ensures outcome,
that intention secures reward.
But mischance is the humbler of that belief.
It reminds us that some things fall through our hands
no matter how tightly we hold them.
And perhaps that’s its strange gift:
a quiet dismantling of illusion
that leaves room for grace.
The Echo of What Might Have Been
There is a special ache in mischance—
not from what happened,
but from what didn’t.
The life that could have bloomed
if not for that missed moment,
the love that hovered close
but never touched down.
This ache lingers.
But it also awakens.
It asks us to look again,
to see what can grow in new, unexpected light.
Turning Toward Resilience
We cannot always rewrite mischance.
But we can reframe it.
We can let it soften our edges,
not harden them.
Let it deepen our empathy,
not drain our faith.
Sometimes the unchosen path,
scattered with the stones of mischance,
becomes the one that teaches us how to walk with more reverence.
In the End
Mischance will always be part of the story—
the plot twist we did not request.
But what we do after,
how we gather ourselves from its margins,
is where meaning is made.
For even mischance,
in its quiet and crooked way,
can guide us to places we never knew we needed to go.