The Art of Drifting: My Life and The River

I am currently homeless and unemployed, and it all feels right.

I've noticed a pattern, or more of a flow, in my recent life. Things will be moving smoothly, and then, an opportunity to change course will present itself. If I resist the change, reject the opportunity, it's almost like swimming upstream, and life becomes harder. The longer I resist the change, the harder it is on me, until I finally relent and go back in the direction of life's flow. Then, as if a track is clicking back into place, life is smooth again. In those moments that I get back into the flow, I feel happier. When I follow the flow, I find that I also grow as a person. Even when I resist the flow because I think I'm doing the right thing by doing so or think that I'll learn something by resisting the change, I find that it creates unnecessary stress, and it's better to just trust the path that's laid out in front of me.

I refer to this phenomenon as "The River."

I've taken the chance to open up to others about The River, and I've been met with nodding heads and similar stories from others' lives.

The first time I spoke to someone about The River was after a massage in Da Nang, Vietnam. I was in recovery mode, fresh out of a few journeys in Burnoutville, and I just wanted to relax. I'd booked myself a massage every day, and I found myself on the second massage table, receiving my first-ever Thai-style massage. I'll say that it's not the most comfortable, relaxing experience for me, personally, being professionally beat up by a woman with lethal strength who could probably kill me mid-massage if she got even the faintest whim to do so. "Relax," I told myself. "Relax relax relax." It wasn't working. But I was adamant, and it became a sort of mantra, the word "relax" echoing every punch to my back and crack of my joints. I tried breathing deeply and rhythmically, faking my way into meditation. And at some point, lying there with my eyes closed, the massage nearly over, I saw an image of a river, the way you'd see images in your mind right before drifting asleep. It was wide and milky blue-grey, water rushing down a predetermined path. I watched it from above, as from a drone view, slowly drifting with it.

I won't say the massage wasn't painful, but afterward, I felt no pain whatsoever, and my mind was finally relaxed. I drifted back to my hostel, where I got into a deep conversation with a new friend, who was the first person I opened up to about this idea of The River.

He excitedly told me his own story. He'd been a film director in Italy, but he wasn't feeling fulfilled with his career anymore. He decided to resign. Sitting in his car with an email draft already typed, his finger hovering above the "send" button, he felt fear and couldn't help but think of how scared he felt. At that moment, a song came on the radio. The title of the song translates into something along the lines of "have no fear." Surprised and encouraged by the song coming on the radio at that exact moment, he pressed "send" and effectively resigned.

He began preparing for a long backpacking adventure around SE Asia, where we ended up meeting. There at the hostel, we bonded over Pokemon, and he showed me a Charmander Pokemon card he'd found on the streets of Milan one day before departing on his journey. His friend had joked that it was his starter Pokemon before his big Pokemon journey.

The next day, walking around Hoi An, I found a Pokemon card on the streets. "I have a little present for you," I messaged him. Later, when giving him the card, he was shocked that I'd randomly found a Pokemon card on the street right after he'd told me his story. He insisted on me keeping it, but I was sure that this card wasn't for me, as I wasn't on my own Pokemon journey just yet.

Five days before I left Korea, walking around the streets of Seoul, I found two Pokemon cards. I'm sure that those were indeed meant for me. Funny enough, on my first day of my own big backpacking adventure in Ningbo, China, my friend and I took a walk along her neighborhood streets. We inadvertently stumbled upon a trail of empty Pokemon card packets that led up the sidewalk to her apartment.

During my burnout adventure, maybe I just didn't have the space, time, or energy to open up to others, let alone notice these small little things in life. I have no idea, but these little details and coincidences are such a joy.

Many of my River stories have come from Vietnam. It's a place where, in just a couple weeks of travel, I found hidden and missing parts of myself, and where I met amazing people who are so open and welcoming. I'm so excited to move there later this year and to see what else it will teach me. I get this feeling that there's something big waiting for me there, though I have no idea what it is, yet.

I get this feeling from the people I meet there, including the head of school (HOS) at the international school that hired me.

Our interview was very informal. It was more of a casual conversation about life. I don't think I brought up the topic, but in natural conversation, the HOS told me his story of how life aligned for him to move to Vietnam, meet his wife, and be able to follow his dreams. He'd grown up poor and a devout Catholic who dreamed of becoming a priest at the age of 34. His bishop recommended that he first date around, and if he was still single by 35, then he could become a priest. Eagerly, his father signed him up for a dating website online, where he met a Filipino woman who was teaching English in Vietnam. He went there to meet her, where he intended to stay for just two weeks. Instead, he never moved back home. He fell in love, and they got married after two months. They're still in Vietnam with their two kids.

Dreams change, and his did, too. It shifted to a dream of being a school principal. He asked his wife if she'd be willing to move to the US for just a few years so he could get admin experience to fulfill his new professional dream. She said no. Not long after, a principal position opened up at his school in Hanoi. He applied and got hired.

Life just has a funny way of working out. The people we meet and the way our paths cross. If you hadn't been at X place at Y time -- if you hadn't made Decision A and turned down Decision B -- if anything had changed even minutely, you may have never met an important person in your life, stumbled into a significant experience, come to a major realization.

Life seems to be a system of choices that concludes into moments that are beautiful or horrifying or any mixture in-between. We all have our own philosophies and beliefs for trying to understand this system, but these days, maybe I'm just tired of over-thinking things. I'm just calling it a River and going with the flow.

What are your River stories?! I love hearing these amazing stories of life aligning and things just coming together. Let me know your story in the comments! ❤️🚣‍♀️