Serendipity and The Sojourner

In just the last six years I have had many homes, both domestic and abroad. I’ve spent a cumulative total of 19 months studying abroad in Australia and Ireland. I lived and worked in Thailand for 7 months. I went to college in Rhode Island and went a little crazy in Florida. My current address is in Arizona but I grew up in New York. Each of these places have been “home.”

I am passionate about my lifestyle and very grateful for everything that had to come together so that I have been able to live like this. However, while my lifestyle is one that others often find envious, there are still downsides, as with everything. The major one, of course, is the lack of stability. When I’m living stateside working restaurant jobs, there is no such thing as a “set schedule,” which means building routines is hard. While traveling and living abroad, the foundation for routines are even more difficult to come by. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m complaining, because I really am so happy with the way that I have been able to live, but this type of nomadic lifestyle does make me wonder, Where am I meant to be?

In my travels I have met many people for whom settling down is not, nor will ever be, an option. I am not one of those people. I dream of a permanent home with a career and a husband and children and a dog. I can picture it all very clearly, with the exception of where this life will be. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve made a wrong turn. In each place I’ve lived, I’ve built the foundation for a life, but then left before giving myself a real chance to live that life. I can see the outline of what that life could have been, but the decision to leave it behind meant that life will never be lived. Sure, I can go back to those places, but I’d have to start building from scratch, and it would be very different the next time around.

Every once in a while, I wonder if I’ve made a mistake, if I left my meant-to-be life behind. Should I have stayed? If so, how could I have known? A friend once told me that running into someone you know in a place you’d never expect to see them is a sign that you’re on the right path. (I don’t remember which friend so, if it was you, please tell me so I can thank you.) This idea has stuck with me since the moment I heard it and I often reflect on it when I wonder if I’m where I’m supposed to be.

My first memory of this type of serendipitous encounter was sometime back in the late 90s. I was at the airport with my parents, flying back to New York from our annual vacation to Sarasota, Florida, when we ran into my oldest friend and her mom. Now, when I say oldest friend, I mean literal oldest friend. Our moms were pregnant together and we had been thrown together from birth. I taught her how to stand on her tippy toes and do a somersault and, in return, she taught me lewd rhymes. Together we got into all kinds of trouble, from eating willow tree leaves and pretending they were magical antidotes against boredom to making a “cake” on the living room table using Elmer’s glue. But, as we got older, our lives began to diverge and, at the time we met in the airport in Florida, it had been a very long time since we had seen each other. So long, in fact, that our mothers, who had at one point been very great friends who were in constant contact, had no idea that we had both just vacationed in Sarasota at the same time. At such a young age, I’m sure I wasn’t aware of the concept that I would need validation from the universe as to whether or not I was taking my life in the wrong direction. I was just happy to see my friend. But, in retrospect, it’s still nice to apply this theory.

I don’t recall another serendipitous encounter for many years, not until I was 19 and took my first trip to Israel. My mom had been pushing me to apply for Birthright since the moment I turned 18 and I had been resisting it since five seconds after turning 18. Growing up, I was required to attend Hebrew school twice a week until my Bat Mitzvah. After my Bat Mitzvah celebration, it was my decision as to whether or not I would continue religious schooling and going to services. I decided not to. I had figured out a few years prior that I did not believe in God, or at least in the way God had been presented to me through any form of organized religion. I completed my year of Torah study that preceded my Bat Mitzvah solely because I wanted a big party like all my cousins and Jewish friends. (My party was a bust – none of my non-Jewish friends came. One mom even said her daughter couldn’t make it because she was grounded but, “She’ll be at the next one!”)

After my Bat Mitzvah I decided I was done going to synagogue for any reason. I wanted my Tuesday and Thursday afternoons back. I was the only Jewish student in my junior high and I wanted to be able to participate in sports and after school programs and “study” sessions with the rest of my classmates. At 13, I had all but written off being Jewish, so when I turned 18 and became eligible for a free trip to Israel to “reconnect with my roots,” I really had no interest. I didn’t want to reconnect. After a year and a half of pestering me, my mom finally figured out the right angle to convince me to go: “It’s an opportunity to travel.” At that point I had only been to Italy, Aruba, and Brazil, but the travel bug had already bitten and the opportunity to venture abroad again, free of charge, became very enticing.

While in Israel, I was shocked by how important my Jewish heritage became to me. It was like touching down in Tel Aviv flipped a switch inside of me and suddenly I wanted to know everything I could about where I came from. We visited the holy site of Jerusalem and being there didn’t really do much for me. That’s how I realized that I don’t feel religiously connected to Judaism, but the connection to cultural Judaism was intense. As I was beginning to come to terms with this realization, I ran into an old friend in the middle of the street in Tel Aviv. We hadn’t seen each other since decorating her house for Halloween when we were 14 and had barely kept in touch. She had just moved to Israel, also discovering the importance of her Jewish heritage in her late teens, as I had. I understood what the universe was saying – that I was on the right path in opening myself up to accepting a part of me that I had been suppressing for years.

But it was as if the universe didn’t really believe that I got the message and felt the need to drive the point home. At the end of my Birthright trip we were brought back to the airport in Tel Aviv where we would board our flight to return to New York. In the airport, at the gate right next to mine, I ran into a guy I had met a year and a half prior. He was a friend of a friend whose family I spent Rosh Hashanah with during my freshman year of college. We had never kept in touch and when I saw him across the terminal, I debated whether or not I should approach, wondering if he would remember me. Eventually our eyes met and I saw the look of recognition on his face so I walked over to him and we chatted, discussing the last contact we each had with our mutual friend, and the Rosh Hashanah dinner we had spent together 18 months earlier. As I talked to him I recalled how uncomfortable I had felt at that dinner, having not celebrated a Rosh Hashanah in nearly 5 years. But, in that moment, reminiscing with him, I found myself wishing I could do it again and wondering if it would feel different this time.

If it wasn’t clear by my domain name and Instagram handle, I have fully embraced my Jewish heritage. It is something that is very important to me and, the older I get and the more I learn, something that I am so glad I was able to reconnect with. At the time of my Israel trip, I remember feeling like by embracing Judaism I would be selling out from my anti-religion stance, but the trip taught me there was more to being Jewish than religion and the culture is something that has become very important to me, something that I am very excited to pass on to my children and my children’s children.

The following year I studied abroad in Australia, which, at the time, was the best time of my life. I had never felt such a sense of belonging and if the travel bug hadn’t truly bitten before my semester abroad, it did then, somewhere between Noosa and Byron Bay. I didn’t need to run into an old friend on the street to know this was where I was meant to be. For this reason, it’s probably not surprising that returning to the U.S., and to the banality of college, pushed me into an acute depression.

It was the beginning of my senior year at the University of Rhode Island and I quickly – and brutally – realized that, in my absence during my semester abroad, no one spent their time missing me. In fact, the Sarah-shaped hole I left behind had all but closed up completely. I couldn’t figure out where I fit in with my old friend groups so I crowbarred my way into new ones. Ultimately, I sabotaged those friendships by constantly starting petty arguments, which I later understood was my need to create drama because my life felt boring without the constant excitement I had become accustomed to in Australia. (It was sick and a little twisted and I’m not proud of it.)

At a moment when I felt especially lost, I responded to a targeted ad on facebook and booked train ticket to NYC to go to an art exhibit in Brooklyn. On the F train to York Street Station a crew of break dancers performed up and down the aisle and pandered for money. In the excitement (which I gleefully paid $5 for), I missed my stop and had to get on the same train in the opposite direction. After getting off at the right stop, I emerged from the underground, and there, walking directly towards me, was a girl I went to high school with who, as young teens, was someone I was very close with. We hadn’t spoken since I attended her graduation the year following mine. We saw each other at the same time and I think it both took us a few seconds to process and make sense of what our eyes were telling our brains. Then we said “oh my god!” and rushed into each other’s arms.

If I hadn’t been so caught up by the dancers on the train and hadn’t missed my stop, we never would have crossed paths on that sidewalk in Brooklyn. I took this to mean that no matter how much of a monotonous mess my life seemed to be, it was okay. I was on the right path, exactly where I was meant to be.

The following year, as a recent college grad with no motivation, I decided to take a five-week, six-thousand-mile road trip around the country, starting in New York and ending in Florida, where I would settle down for a while. In the middle of my third week on the road I was visiting a friend in San Antonio when I ran into an old classmate from Hebrew school. We hadn’t seen each other in years but he was with his father who was, and is, good friends with my father. The three of us took a picture together, which was promptly texted to my dad, and then we said our goodbyes and parted ways. I could easily say that this was a confirmation that my decision to travel around the country and move to Florida was absolutely the right one, but the seven months I lived in Florida turned out to be the worst few months of my life, so I’m not entirely sure what the universe was trying to tell me by that run in. Perhaps, simply, sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence, and nothing more.

I could have easily bought into that theory, as I didn’t have another serendipitous encounter for nearly four years, but that doesn’t mean I believe that I was on the wrong path for those four years. In fact, over those four years I moved to Thailand where I taught English, moved to Ireland where I earned a master’s degree, and moved to Arizona where I reconnected with my family and made some of the greatest friends I’ve ever had. That’s not to say I was 100% confident in all of my choices, but that’s kind of what life is about, isn’t it?

Then, at the end of May this year, while I was road tripping from Arizona to New York (with a slight detour through Nevada and California) it happened again. That morning I had left my apartment hours later than I had originally planned and spent most of my drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas beating myself up over it. But then I checked Instagram and saw a post that two old friends from Rhode Island who I hadn’t seen in many years were in Vegas, spending a week on the strip. I was about an hour from Vegas at that point and I immediately messaged them to meet up. We went to the Seven Magic Mountains together and then gorged ourselves at the Bacchanal Buffet, something that never would have happened if I had left my apartment on time and seen their instagram post when I was already in California. I hadn’t exactly been questioning my life’s path at that time. In fact, I was feeling pretty confident in it. But it was nice to have the universe’s reassurance.

Recently I almost entered into a relationship with a man who felt like “the one,” if you believe in that sort of thing. This was a huge part of what I had felt so confident about back in Vegas. It seemed as if the universe had pushed us together: each tiny little detail had to happen exactly the way it had for us to find our way to each other. It felt a lot like fate. But then the universe, that bitch, pulled our fate right out from under us, throwing wrench-shaped circumstances in the middle of all our plans. The day after we ended things, I left for two months of international travel, starting in Peru.

Travel is my comfort zone, so I expected to find solace there. But instead I was faced with what felt like every little thing going wrong and an inability to brush it off. In a lifestyle where, in the past, even my worst days were amazing, I was feeling homesick for the first time in a decade with the overwhelming desire to catch the first flight home. I think I may have jinxed myself. I had joked a few times before leaving that I had been so lucky in my travels for six years that I think my luck might be about to run out. From day one, when the buckle on my 70 liter backpack was smashed at the airport, making the bag insanely difficult to carry, to day 36 when I got stranded in the middle of the woods during a torrential downpour after my phone died and external battery pack stopped working. After seeing my live video on instagram (before my phone died), my parents in America called the police in Germany to search for me. Everyday something new was going wrong, from my toiletries repeatedly exploding in my bag to getting a wicked head cold to ending up in a Bolivian hospital with a stomach infection brought on by altitude sickness.

It’s been eight weeks since I started on this trip and the clawing feeling in the pit of stomach that this just isn’t right has yet to go away. Even though the San Antonio run in sort of convinced me that the universe might not be giving me signs at all, there’s still so much more evidence to the contrary, and I’m beginning to think that the failure of my almost-relationship and every little thing going wrong on this trip might be the universe’s way of telling me it’s time for a course correction, that I’m heading down a path that isn’t where I belong. Sure, I could just chalk it all up as life’s ups and downs or challenges to overcome, but regardless of what the universe is telling me, my gut is telling me it’s time to hang up my travel hat, at least for a little while.

According to the KonMari method, if something no longer brings us joy, we shouldn’t keep it. Travel no longer brings me joy, but I’m too sentimental of a person (and a bit of a hoarder – Marie Kondo would freak if she saw my closet) to throw away travel completely, so instead I’m just going to shelve it for a bit. I’ll look at it lovingly, remember all the good times and great friends it brought me, but let it collect dust. And then, in a few years, when I’ve had some time to rest, I’ll take it down, brush it off, and ask it, “What can we do together now?”

Or perhaps there will be a giant earthquake that knocks my travel to the ground, breaks it wide open, and reminds me everything I’ve been missing so I’ll hit the road again. But I’ll leave that up to the universe.