missed connections.

It is not everyday that we get extra time and extra moments to spare with people we love. Often times we find ourselves chasing the shadow that has us running to meet the places our hearts long to stay, but serendipitously, I found myself inheriting 24 extra hours in Seoul, a city I last visited more than a decade ago, with a friend who I have know for equally as long at the end of a trip that has me asking more questions than answers. 

I have forgotten how much my early adulthood was shaped by Asia and coming back, and in going again to places my body once inhabited, I find myself running to the spaces that I have outgrown, with grief, joy and gratitude. Seoul was just as I remembered it. The facades may have changed, but the essence of what I remembered it to be remained the same. I wandered the same streets I did back a full decade ago, a little wiser and recall with fondness the mistakes one makes in the fullness of youth. 

I missed my connection, by ten minutes, and in another life, I probably would have had a quiet meltdown, but instead, found solace in a friend whose year has equally been as challenging if not more than mine, as we found another 12 hours together, I remembered the why behind everything in life that I hold most dear. It has never been in the striving and building a life or career, or even checking off the bingo squares, and doing the things expected of us in this day and age. It has always been about presence, and time, and the people we meet along the way. It is about the stories shared, laughs laughed, and life lived — together. It has always been about late night tears in an unfamiliar bedroom, drunken nights over chicken pho in Chinatown. This time, it was midnight in Seoul, in a city neither one of us particularly cared for, in search of stamps in convenience stores and the promise of connection and humanity around the world. 

C and I are both third-culture kids. We both have our avoidant streaks, and have complicated relationships with family. C is learning to find herself again, the same way I am learning to find myself for the first time. C is one of the most stubborn humans I know, but in the best kind of way, because it is from that grit that she finds herself a fighter and one I know I can call whenever life has me down. C almost missed her flight the same way I missed mine, yet, she got to where she needed to go the same way I needed to as well. As we said goodbye, we laughed at the random place we would both each find one another again. Until then, a postcard will suffice, perhaps from Southern Africa as we joke about a trip to Mauritius. C is one of the bravest people I know, because life forces us to be brave sometimes, not because we want to, but because we have to be, and she teaches me to go out swinging, regardless of the cost. 

The older I get the more I realize that life is about connection, intimacy and intentionality with others. Life is far more valuable with the people we find ourselves with. If I am to be remembered, I want to be remembered for the spaces I hold and share with people and not just the things that I get to do. Life has never been about collecting bingo squares, but about sharing in humanity and missed timely connection.