'10:10', by Mahathi

I was the class teacher for ninth grade, constantly swept up in the tide of their little obsessions and rituals. One of the strangest was the fascination with 11:11 wishes. My students treated that minute as if it were a doorway to destiny, whispering their hopes into the air like charms.
But me? I never caught 11:11. I saw 11:12, 11:13, even 11:14, but never the so-called magic. Instead, I kept stumbling into 10:10. And 10:10, for me, was no blessing. It became the villain of my days.
I failed my dream job interview scheduled at 10:10. I sneezed midspeech after glancing at my watch at 10:10. I lost a baseball game just after the score tied at 10–10. Slowly, I began to believe that this minute was cursed. I even started setting my clocks a few minutes early on auspicious days, as if I could outwit time itself.
But then, it was another normal day when I was going along the pull of my household chores, cleaning the dishes as my warning alarm rung at 10:10. I paused. A pigeon on the windowsill, turning its head at different angles looking for crumbs, and it flies slicing the air into the sky. I put everything aside and slumped into my couch perplexedly. A sudden thought perks into my mind, “Seriously? Would these digits on the clock have the power to determine my life more than I ever could? Or doesn’t the priceless ruler of so-called ‘time’ have better business than stalking a mere ninth grade class teacher just to make her life worse!”
It hit me then: The universe isn’t a math problem, it’s a chaotic, beautiful mess. I realized the clock is just a rhythmic machine, and I am the one who gives the gears their flavor. And honestly, it’s all pretty lucky when you stop waiting for the sky to fall!

11:11 is widely recognized as a "master number" in numerology representing intuition, insight, and spiritual awakening