Utopia: A Place Built by You
Utopia is a place created by you — defined by you. A realm
or state that exists only in the imagination, where everything is perfect.
Shall we attempt expanding this idea into a story?
The Girl Who Waited
She was tired.
Not from work — no, she
had mastered work. She excelled at it, too good, in fact. She had climbed high,
earned well, sat in glass-walled offices with views of sprawling cities that
promised everything, yet delivered very little. She knew how to play the game,
understood the rules, even won occasionally. But victory—victory felt hollow. A
cheap medal, a hollow clink of metal against the walls of a life that should’ve
felt better.
As a child, she believed
that good things were for those who deserved them. She believed that if you
played the game of life correctly, it would reward you with clarity, precision,
and satisfaction. She had waited for the world to rise to meet her, to become
what it was supposed to be.
The world, meanwhile, had carried on like a drunk man
stumbling home, indifferent to her expectations.
She had been waiting for something better. A world that made
sense. A world that honored the weight of her efforts.
By the time she turned
forty, exhaustion had set in — not the kind that a good night's sleep could
fix, but the kind that comes when a machine is overused, grinding down piece by
piece. For years, she had calibrated herself to be sharp, efficient,
indispensable — only to find that the world preferred the dull and the
effortless. The emails never stopped. Excel sheets kept multiplying.
Promotions, when they came, felt empty. She had become a master at surviving,
but not at living. The wait stretched long, but she held on, patient. Surely,
the world would correct itself, eventually.
Then, one afternoon, in a
café that smelled of burnt coffee beans and something sweeter she couldn’t
quite place, the truth arrived — not with a bang, but with the indifference of a
waiter who didn’t care.
She had ordered a latte.
What arrived was an Americano. Wrong, distasteful, insulting, off-course.
"This isn’t what I
asked for," she said, polite but sharp
The waiter looked at her,
a blank expression forming as he turned halfway to another table. "Do you
want me to take it back?"
She opened her mouth to say, Yes
Yes, because things should be right
Yes, because small mistakes led to bigger ones
Yes, because after all these years of waiting for the world to get its act together, she was owed at least one damn correct cup of coffee
But then, she saw --
The city outside the window. The people inside the café. The
waiter, unconcerned. The wrong coffee, cooling by every second.
Nothing was going to fix itself. Not here. Not anywhere.
The realization didn’t
creep in slowly, as realizations sometimes do. No, this one was immediate. In
the span of a single breath, an entire life’s belief crumbled.
She picked up the wrong
coffee. Took a sip. It was warm, bitter, burnt at the edges. It tasted like
resignation—like the first step into surrender. It was...fine.
And then, the right coffee arrived.
The waiter placed it in front of her with a smile. "Your latte, madam."
She stared at the two
cups— One Wrong, One Right. Just like all the careful choices she had made. Each
decision was supposed to lead her to something better, only to land her here.
Forty years of waiting for the world to correct itself, and here was the
punchline: Even when it did, it was too late.
She laughed. The sound
startled even her. The waiter, uninterested, unbothered, moved on
Outside, the city was as
chaotic as ever — indifferent, as it had always been.
She picked up the right
coffee, took a sip. It felt like it was exclusively made for her, as per her
choice, perfect in her way.
She exhaled. And for the
first time in her life, she stopped waiting.
She lifted her choice of
cup, let another sip linger on her tongue — Perfectly milky, a bit bitter but
heavenly sweet — and then set it down with quiet finality.
The world would go on,
and so would she.
Perhaps destiny doesn’t
meet us at some perfect, preordained moment, but along the way — after
many wrong turns and few right turns — as we navigate our maps toward our own personal Utopia.
