The English language confused me as a child, especially the word “read.” I couldn’t understand why it was spelled the same way whether you’re reading now or read something yesterday. Every time I saw it, I’d think, “This should be different! It needs its own spelling for the past tense!”
I wanted to fix it. I wanted to change the rules to match what made sense in my head. After all, if we spell other past tense words differently, why not this one? As a kid, I was sure this was just a mistake that needed correcting.
But here’s what I’ve learned since then: things don’t always need to match our idea of what’s right to work perfectly well. It’s like in Squid Game Season 2, where the main character thought he could change things simply because the games didn’t make sense to him. He believed he could rewrite the rules, make things work his way, just as I once wanted to rewrite the rules of English.
Yet as we grow and learn, something interesting happens. The things that once confused us start to make sense, not because they changed, but because we did. We begin to understand that sometimes what looks wrong or confusing might have its own purpose, its own logic that we just can’t see yet.
This simple lesson from my childhood struggle with “read,” much like the harsh lessons learned in Squid Game, taught me something bigger: when things don’t make sense to us, maybe we don’t need to fix them. Maybe we just need to give ourselves time to understand why they are the way they are.
Because sometimes, the things we think need fixing are actually teaching us how to see the world differently.