I used to think God, the universe, whoever’s up there… just didn’t like me very much.

Some people are born with “main character energy”. They walk into a room and conversation softens around them. They get the call back, the promotion, the proposal. Meanwhile I was 28, exhausted, single, buried in bills, and somehow always the one standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when something went wrong.

At work, I was the girl who stayed late to fix other people’s mistakes, but still got the cold email from my boss: “We need to talk.” At home, the lights were always too bright, the fridge too empty, and the silence too loud. My friends were posting engagement photos and travel vlogs. I was posting… motivational quotes I didn’t believe in.

“Maybe I just don’t have blessings,” I told myself one night, staring at my phone screen until the numbers blurred. “Maybe some people are born lucky, and some people are just… background characters.”

That afternoon had been especially brutal. A project I’d worked on for three months got handed to someone else. My manager called it a “strategic decision.” It felt like a polite way of saying, “You’re replaceable.”

On the way home, I got off the bus one stop early. I didn’t know why. I just felt like if I went straight back to my apartment, I’d sink through the floor and disappear. My feet dragged me to a small open-air market, the kind I always rushed past. The air smelled like damp earth and fried food. People were bargaining loudly, scooters weaving through the crowd.

I was walking like a ghost between the stalls when I heard a soft voice:
“Miss, you look very tired. Would you like some vegetables for dinner?”

I turned and saw her.

She was tiny, with thin gray hair pulled back, a faded brown shirt, and hands so rough they looked like they’d been washed with gravel. She stood behind a table piled with cucumbers, morning glory, and herbs. Nothing about her screamed “lucky” or “blessed.” If anything, she looked like life had demanded too much from her.

But her eyes… her eyes were clear. Calm. Warm in a way that almost hurt to look at.

I mumbled something like, “No, thank you, I’m not cooking tonight.” My voice cracked on the last word and, to my horror, my eyes filled with tears. I tried to blink them back, but one slipped out anyway.

The old woman stepped closer, slow and gentle, as if I were a frightened animal. She didn’t ask, “What’s wrong?” She didn’t offer fake encouragement. She just looked at me, really looked, like I wasn’t invisible.

Then she did something simple: she put one hand on her own chest and said quietly,
“Your face is tired because your heart is tired. Start fixing it here first.”

Just one sentence. No spiritual vocabulary. No complicated advice. But the way she said it, with that small, steady smile, felt like someone had cracked open a window in a room I’d been suffocating in.

I ended up buying a handful of vegetables I didn’t know how to cook. She wrapped them up, slipped an extra chili in “for luck,” and wished me a peaceful evening. As I walked away, the noise of the market faded behind me, but her words kept echoing in my head.

That night, instead of scrolling numbly through social media, I opened a random video a friend had shared: a Dharma talk about “blessings.” Normally, I’d have swiped past it. But something in me was raw enough to listen.

The teacher said, “Blessings are not things you win in a lottery. They grow from how you think, how you speak, how you treat other people. Gratitude. Small good deeds no one sees. A clean heart in a dirty world.”

I remembered how I’d been living lately: complaining in my head for hours, replaying every unfair thing that had ever happened to me, mentally cursing my boss, resenting friends who were happier than me. Outwardly, I was “nice.” Inside, I was sharp, bitter, constantly asking, “Why me?”

It hit me like a punch in the stomach: maybe it wasn’t that blessings avoided me. Maybe I had been pushing them away.

I didn’t wake up the next morning as a saint. I still dragged myself to work, still felt the same knot in my chest when I saw the coworker who “stole” my project. But that day, I did one new thing: I said thank you out loud three times. Once to the bus driver. Once to the cleaning lady in our office. Once to myself, for just surviving.

It was awkward. It felt fake at first. But something in me softened, just a millimeter.

Days turned into weeks. I started doing tiny, ridiculous things: picking up trash in the elevator, sending an encouraging message to a colleague, keeping my mouth shut when everyone else was gossiping. I didn’t post about it. No one applauded. But the “background noise” inside my head started to change.

One evening, my boss pulled me into her office. I braced myself for bad news. Instead, she said, “I’ve noticed how you handle people. Clients trust you. The team listens to you. I want you to lead a new project.”

It wasn’t a miracle. It wasn’t a jackpot. It was just… a door opening that used to always stay shut.

And slowly, I saw it everywhere. A neighbor offered me a ride on a rainy morning. An old friend reached out to reconnect. Even my own reflection changed—my face looked less hard, less tired. Not suddenly beautiful, just… gentler.

I still think about that old woman in the market. I’ve gone back a few times. Sometimes I buy vegetables, sometimes I just stand there and talk. She always laughs when I call her my “life coach.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” she says. “I only reminded you where to look.”

Maybe you don’t believe in karma or blessings or whatever word you want to use. That’s okay. But I’ll tell you this: the moment I stopped asking, “Why am I so unlucky?” and started asking, “What am I planting in my own heart every day?”—my life began to feel less like punishment and more like a story I could rewrite.

So now, when everything goes wrong, I do one thing before I cry, before I complain, before I blame: I put my hand on my chest, just like she did, and I ask, “How is my heart today?”

Because maybe blessings aren’t something we wait for.
Maybe they’re something we quietly grow.

If you’ve ever felt like the unlucky one, the extra in everyone else’s movie… tell me: what are you planting in your heart lately? 🌱