What happens when you stop forcing things — northern Hong Kong, Sunday afternoon. I’m wrapping up a conference that’s been running for the last three days. Around 400 people.
I had a goal: talk to one of the visiting speakers. But I look over and he’s being praised by a group of people near the exit — and showing up there would feel like forcing it. I don’t feel it that way.
He leaves. I head toward the escalators.
And then a thought crosses my mind: this is an easy opportunity. I could walk out right behind him — standing on the escalator, there’d probably be a natural opening to exchange a few words. And it’s his last chance too, since he’s heading back to another part of Asia after this.
But I didn’t move.
I smiled to myself, looked around at the rest of the room, calmly tucked my bag under my arm and headed toward the bathroom — laughing quietly and telling myself: “If something is meant to happen, it will. Don’t push life. Leave space for the world.”
A few minutes later I stopped to take photos of the horse sculpture welcoming everyone at the entrance. Then I left through the underground parking.
And there he was again.
Walking ahead of me. Someone must have stopped him along the way. He’d have to turn right or left — and I smiled to myself again, wondering which direction he’d choose. Right. Well then, I thought, let’s see what happens next — the train station I’m heading to is that way too.
A building blocked my view. I lost sight of him.
When I turned the corner — there he was, approaching a pedestrian crossing. The light was already routing him a different way from mine. But he stopped. Red light.
He looked around — and his eyes landed on me. He smiled, even though we didn’t know each other. And as I got closer, walking in my direction, he said: “Hello.”
I should explain why I wanted to talk to him in the first place. His lectures had been different from the others. There was something in the way he thought and argued — something that felt familiar to me. Like we had something in common.
His “hello” pulled me out of observing a scene that was never supposed to happen — an interaction I’d let go of and handed over to the world to do with what it wanted.
I answered easily and mentioned offhandedly that his lectures had been good. We exchanged a few words and he asked which team in HK I was with.
I laughed and said — Poland. Meaning none of the invited teams. Just a guest from the Polish team, passing through on a trip.
His eyes widened. “You speak Polish?”
I looked at him in disbelief and nodded — silently asking how on earth he spoke Polish too.
And that’s how an extraordinary conversation began. One where for a while neither of us remembered where we were going. The lights had turned green and red again several times. The train I’d planned to catch was already several stops past my station.
Relationships and energy. Something we feel — something that can’t always be put into words — something much closer to intuition than logic.
A few months ago, if I’d had a plan, I would have invented something, pushed myself toward it — following my logical conviction that if you want something, you just act and don’t wait for circumstances. I probably would have walked up while he was still with the group, introduced myself, and tried to hold attention long enough for a conversation to have a chance.
Would that have been wrong? No — I don’t think so. Sometimes I got what I wanted that way. But it was often forced. Harder to be light. Harder to avoid that slightly awkward undertone. Still — somehow it worked.
But this situation showed me something I couldn’t have reached any other way.
That letting go — not pushing reality, but allowing it to unfold, to clarify, without tension — does its own work. That it creates the conditions for something genuinely valuable. And that if something is meant to come to us or come back — it will. Even in the most improbably funny way.
I’m not saying deliberate action is a bad idea. But it is a bad idea when we’re acting toward a goal in a way we don’t actually feel. If we’re not comfortable and natural in something — the other person won’t be either.
So maybe sometimes, instead of fighting at any cost — it’s better to let go?
And maybe sometimes the key is simply that we stop caring too much — and that’s exactly when everything falls into place?
