Sometimes what we need arrives in a surprise package, like the guy who sits next to you on a tiny boat in the Caribbean ocean, on an overly expensive trip you had no intention of taking even as the determined salesman sells you the ticket. He’s a guy who makes you laugh with his very introduction. He’s the guy who encourages you to be the first one to jump in the water with the bioluminescent plankton because somehow, even though he speaks another language, he knows that’s exactly what you want to do while everyone else plays shy. He’s the guy you end up sitting beside on the curb of the street outside of your hotel as you cry over how much you have not been enjoying your life. You have so much compared to him in terms of money and opportunity and yet he’s the one comforting you saying, no lloras por favor. He shows you his city with a gusto you’ve never witnessed in yourself or anyone you know, or maybe it’s just been too long without that kind of joy. And then, like that, on that same curb a day later you say adios.

But the surprises keep following you around from city to city. In Medellín it’s an Aussie sitting at the dinner table next to you and he’s ordered a delicious plate of food with two salads. You’ve been missing vegetables like you’ve been missing part of your soul for days now, so you ask him, shyly, ‘what’s that you’re eating?’ He offers a seat at his table where an American is already sitting with him.  He gets you a menu in English and you’re set. You don’t want to intrude but you also wouldn’t mind the company. You still have 3 more weeks on this solo trek. A conversation, good or bad, tonight is more than you may have for many days. And the conversation turns out to be quite good, especially when the American leaves. The Aussie walks you back to your hotel because he’s feeling gentlemanly. You accept because you know that your mother would appreciate it and again on the curb in front of your hotel the conversation has turned from international affairs to the very interior of your soul. You’re traveling alone because your boyfriend is traveling with his daughter and you didn’t want to be left behind in the depressing rain. You’re so sick of the disillusionment, the lie of society that for a happy life you must have the life with x,y,z but no one has told those proclaiming this recipe of happiness that the ingredients changed a long time ago, right before their eyes and they were so distracted by the shiny lies of material goods that they didn’t notice this is no longer the way the world works anymore. Those things don’t actually have value and half of them are practically unobtainable, like owning a home with a white picket fence. You’re crying big heaving sobs as you talk about your ex-marriage, your desire to be a writer and your disgust with all the good intentions of bad advice you’ve received over the years. No one knows and yet they keep telling you what to do, how to live like they know but they don’t and it hasn’t led you anywhere. And finally that’s where the relief comes in. You’ve held these tears, carried them for so long now and finally they’re no longer inside you. You thank the stranger, pack your bags and get on the next plane. You’re leaving but only just beginning to arrive at your destination. That destination is the joy and wonder of the little girl inside you.

You’re ready to change and you’re starting to have an idea of what that change will be.