The First Time I Felt Found

I don’t remember the first time I felt lost, but I remember the first time I felt found.

It was in Lisbon, on a day when the sky couldn’t decide whether to rain or shine. The city was a maze of winding streets and blue-tiled buildings, every turn leading somewhere unexpected. After a tiring day at the office, I had wandered too far from where I was supposed to be, lost track of time, of direction… of purpose. The air smelled like coffee and salt, the river teasing the edges of the city. I had no map, no destination—only the sound of tram bells in the distance and my own footsteps on the uneven stones.

As I walked along the street, I spotted a tiny bookstore, its sign almost hidden by the two sun-faded buildings that it sat between. In the window of the shop were piles of books in countless languages, some I recognized and some I had never seen before. As I stepped inside of the store, the bell on the door jingled a friendly hello. The walls that weren’t lined with bookshelves had photographs of famous people who had stopped by the shop before. 

The air was thick with the dust and comforting smell of old books. In all of the cities I had traveled to, nowhere had ever felt so familiar before. If it hadn’t been my first time in Lisbon, I might have sworn I had been to the very same bookstore before. The old man behind the counter barely looked up, only giving me a small nod as he looked up from the book he was reading.

As I wandered the rows of shelves, I stopped at a faded red hardcover, the edges of its pages curled from too many hands. I pulled the book from the shelf and found within its resilient old cover an inscription that read, One day, may you open this book again and find that, like its pages, your life has been well-worn, well-traveled, and filled with stories worth telling."

I stood there for what felt like a long time, the stillness of the bookstore holding me there as though I were part of it. I don’t know who wrote it or how it ended up here, but at that moment, it felt like someone had reached across time just to speak to me.

That was the day I started collecting the world—not just postcards or trinkets, but memories. The way Fado music sounded in a dimly lit bar, the warmth of a stranger’s kindness when I fumbled through my Portuguese, the way the Atlantic wind tangled my hair as I stood at the edge of the city, looking out at where explorers once left for the unknown.

Every city, every journey, has left an imprint on me.