xiao long bao (小笼包)

I walked into a Chinese restaurant the other day and immediately got overwhelmed.

Not by the menu or the food.

By the process.

I didn’t know whether I was supposed to seat myself. I didn’t know if someone would bring a menu. I didn’t know whether I ordered at the counter or at the table. None of these questions mattered very much, but in that moment they felt strangely expensive.

So I left.

Outside, I seriously considered going to Jack in the Box instead. I know exactly how Jack in the Box works: walk in, order, wait, eat, leave.

No ambiguity. No decisions. No surprises.

The problem was that I didn’t actually want Jack in the Box.

I wanted something more than Jack in the Box.

I wanted to sit down somewhere, order lunch, and feel normal.

That morning had already been full. Election work. Phone calls. Questions about school. Questions about work. Questions about where my life is headed next.

By lunchtime, even small uncertainty felt heavier than it should have.

I was tired. Not the kind that sleep fixes, but the kind that comes from carrying too many open loops at once.

Small decisions become larger than they should be. Minor uncertainty starts to feel like risk.

A person standing in a doorway wondering how to order lunch looks irrational from the outside.

From the inside, it can be the final straw.

The problem was that I still wanted dumplings.

I almost skipped lunch entirely.

I walked toward Campus Burger.

Then I started back toward work.

Somewhere along the way, I changed my mind.

I walked down Paseo de San Antonio and tried one more place.

I ordered xiao long bao.

Nothing dramatic happened. Nobody cared that I hesitated in another restaurant. Nobody noticed the debate I had been having with myself. The world continued exactly as before.

I got the thing I had been looking for all along.

A table.

A menu.

A normal lunch.

Nothing about it was remarkable.

That was the point.

We do this all the time.

We tell ourselves we’re upset about an email, a meeting, a conversation, or a restaurant.

Often those things are simply where the bill comes due.

The real story started hours, weeks, or months earlier.

The dumplings were never the story.