Every time a girl far away tells me to visit, I start to dream.
“Maybe, this is it. Maybe, all I have to do is board a plane.”
I would book a ticket to paradise, and then I’d find you. It would be my big expedition, my grand journey. I’d search for you slowly, but — as it did for all great explorers — the discovery would happen all at once.
First I’d be lost at the airport, then you’d bring friends over for brunch. We’d get to know each other and with each passing second, we’d realize we share all these unlikely, minute, yet somehow profound connections.
We’d turn the island upside down until we had undraped every angle, turned every last stone. We’d take long walks and talk long talks. We’d try every food until our stomachs hurt and all we could do was to lie down and laugh.
One night, we’d sit by the fire until everyone was gone, until all the voices but the ocean’s had left. We’d stare into the sparks and ask questions that never find answers, but we wouldn’t mind because it’s just as beautiful to watch them go up in flames.
And then, we’d lean on one another. Into each other, really. Slowly, our foreheads touch and we kiss. Colors explode and so do our brains. The world turns from HD to 4K. We kiss, we dance, we laugh, we jump, and the next morning, we wake up wrapped in sheets and around one another.
Suddenly, everything is magic. It all feels like magic. And it is.
We hold hands, we link our hearts, we open our eyes and look deeper and deeper into our souls. We fly high, we lay low, and, for a while, it feels like the world revolves around no one but us.
Until, one day, we wake up again not in trance but in truth. The truth that, someday, the dream will end. Maybe, I have to leave. Maybe, you have to go.
Either way, paradise was never real. It was a place we both escaped to and so were the versions of each other that we sought.
Alas, we played our parts perfectly. You, the beautiful siren, calling out from afar. Me, the dedicated sailor, determined to get to you.
What happened? Did fate lose its way? Is this a cosmic joke?
Maybe not. Maybe, it was never meant to be.
Some people travel, and then they fall in love. Others travel to fall in love.
The difference is subtle, but profound. They might not always know who they’re looking for, but they’re always looking for someone.
This changes the very nature of whatever relationship subsequently forms. By the time you meet someone, you’ve already fallen in love. Not with them, but the idea of who they could be. The process of falling for them. The fantasies about how your dream will unfold.
That’s why the dream always ends. Because the real person inside it never stood a chance. You forgot to give them one. You never met them. Just your own, infatuated projections.
No, this was never fate. If it was, you’d have your head screwed on right. Fate always finds its way. It’s you who ends up taking the twists and turns.
You may be destined to meet someone on the road, but that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to look for them. If you must fall for someone as you travel the world, fall in love with yourself.
Only then can you look into people’s eyes and see the truth. Because you’re leveled. Your plane may take off soon, but your feet remain on the ground.
Every time a girl far away tells me to visit, I start to dream.
“Maybe, this is it. Maybe, all I have to do is board a plane.”
Then, I remember.
“No. I want to meet you here.”
Here is where discovery is a science, not a stroke of luck. A never-ending series of experiments, each forming new hypotheses, waiting to collapse.
Here is wherever the ground feels strange beneath our feet. Where life is so real that it scares us. Every day. So every day, we have to reinvent ourselves.
Here is where discomfort won’t allow us to project. Where we’re busy figuring out who we are, we just happen to do it alongside one another.
Here is where when the sparks don’t fly, we call the super. Where we fix things with our hands, our minds, our presence, not our words.
Here is where we don’t jump on each other’s backs, but extend a hand when one of us falls. Where we try to lift the other up, not weigh them down.
Here is where we celebrate each of our accomplishments as if we achieved them together. Where we can both blow up our own stuff, but party together.
Here is where life is only magical if we continue pulling rabbits out of our hats. It takes practice. But every day, our performance gets a little better.
Here is where the world doesn’t spin around us, but around the people we care about. And we’re happy to forget ourselves for them.
Here is where we take comfort not in our edge, but in the fact that, in a world full of idiots, our weirdness isn’t such a big deal. At least we’re crazy together.
Here is where we don’t just play our parts, we invent them. Every single minute, one day at a time. Where fate doesn’t always have a say. Where we do.
Here is where we get to know each other not as figments of our imagination but as parts of our reality. As people. People in a constant state of change.
Here is a place we might travel to, but, above all, it’s a place within ourselves.
Here is where I’ll wait for you, even if it takes forever. Even if I’m the one who has to leave. Maybe, I’ll travel the world. Maybe, I’ll never even board a plane.
But when we finally meet, we’ll both know we had to make our own way to get here. It wasn’t something we could have skipped, because in the end, it was the thing that made it real. The journey will be what tells us for sure:
For the first time in our lives, we’ve actually arrived.