Crossroads
On jumping, with or without a net
Taipei, circa 2002. I was having dinner with a friend in a restaurant/bar downtown which was as trendy as it was ultra-minimalistic in the dĂŠcor, and I was chatting to her about the choices we make in life. I was in front of a crossroads. My year as a scholarship student at the Taiwan Normal University following my graduation was coming to an end and soon I would face the daunting task of making a choice and give my life a direction, a direction I could not see through the thick fog of self-doubt and insecurities. I had hoped that the year in Taiwan would somehow give me answers about my future, I was hoping it was the push or nudge I needed to stir my life in a certain direction, but apart from having lots of fun and exponentially improving my Mandarin, I didnât achieve anything extraordinary, in spite of my expectations. To be honest I donât even know what my expectations were. I had very confusing dreams, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but it was a desire hard to confess, even to myself. More importantly, I had no clue on how to become one, and zero faith I had what it took. In a combination of chance and rather haphazard choices, later on, I found myself on a path that couldnât have been further from the road of my dreams.
Back to me and my friend, that night she was arguing that, in life, if you know what you want you should go for it, start walking on the main road that will take you to your destination, without letting any of the sideways lead you astray.
I remember thinking about it and saying, yes that makes sense of course, but what if, instead of going for the main road you go off the beaten path and let yourself explore the side roads, those tiny, sometimes quaint, sometimes spooky alleys that may or may not take you to the destination but in the meanwhile will have made your journey incredibly more fun? There is a huge risk you might never eventually get where you originally wanted to be but wasnât this a risk worth taking?
âWell yeah,â my friend said, unimpressed by my excitement, âif you want to waste your time, I suppose.â
Needless to say, she was a very pragmatic type.
I often remember this conversation and I like to take it as an example of two different approaches to life. On one hand, you have the committed person, who knows exactly where she wants to go and how to get there. We all know them. Those who knew they wanted to become doctors when they were six years old, budding entrepreneurs with a lemonade stand at age four that go on and build business empires. Thatâs wonderful, but itâs not me. Long before I settled on my writing dream, I still remember asking my Dad with great worry if a volleyball player could at the same time be a doctor and a pianist, Â and later on, in my teenage years, found myself very torn between the desire to be an actress or perhaps a filmmaker having already ruled out the possibility to become a supermodel (it was the â90s people!) because of, well, obvious reasons. I firmly belong to the category of wanderers, those who find it hard to commit to a path, who must stop and check the views, smell the flowers, chasing the butterflies. Those of us who find the pull of exploring the sideways impossible to resist and sooner than they think, find themselves on a totally different path than the one they set off for. To be clear, I donât consider this approach to be better, or more interesting, or more exciting. In fact, for most part of my life, Iâve had to face a rather harsh inner critic who mercilessly judged me as somebody who, in spite of the privilege of having a choice in her own future, was incapable of committing to anything, interested in way too many things, and severely lacking the focus it takes to build a long-lasting career. And itâs all true. If thatâs what youâre thinking, reader, know that I have already thought that before, and sacrificed a lot of my mental health asking myself why on earth I wasnât born with the sacred fire of a vocation and the determination to pursue it. But I realized that we simply arenât all the same, and there is no way to be that is better than the other. All I can say is that my life so far has been anything but boring. Unscattered perhaps, but not boring.
If there are always two sides to the story, then I should also say that I might not have become a published author (yet), or an award winning humanitarian, or a fearless reporter, but in my own modest way I realized a lot of my childhood dreams plus added some unexpected experiences to the eclectic mix that is my life.
First, I realized the biggest dream of seeing the world, experience different cultures, learn different languages. I met interesting people, worked in a Chinese factory in the middle of nowhere (among other things), managed an office, quit a career I wasnât aligned with, discovered an artistic side, cultivated it, took that photography class (and then some!), started a photography business, got an MFA in creative writing, Â and above all, had three wonderful children with an equally wonderful partner. These are only some of the directions my sideways took me to. Itâs not always been easy, and I donât mean to toot my own horn, just perhaps give myself a small pat on the back and say hey, itâs ok. You might not have a job description and a business card to hand over to the world, but look how much else youâve seen and done. Â My life, just like anybody elseâs has had highs and lows, but my point is, sometimes there is magic in going astray and getting lost, there is power in curiosity and lots of peace to be found when you take a moment to look back and see how far youâve walked, rather than being exclusively fixed on your destination.
 Sideways mean that inevitably, soon or later, we will be faced with crossroads containing infinite possibilities. My choices have always been dictated by a mix of curiosity and gut feeling, the same gut feeling that today took me to start another adventure in a totally different place, far away from what I have known for the past fifteen years, in a moment when, after my MFA graduation which I pursued with so much passion,  I could have finally focused on my goal of writing a novel.
Yet the call was impossible to resist, the road ahead too promising not to be explored.
 When I started writing this essay, I was still traveling, my mind was suddenly trapped in reasonable fears and too-familiar anxiety. All sorts of thoughts were crowding my mind. What were we thinking? Uprooting our children to go to a country I visited once, twenty-plus years ago? What if they donât like it, what if we donât like it? What if our family canât adjust to this? What if we canât feel ourselves at home? What if we never find another home?
Full disclosure: new beginnings are exciting, but they are also incredibly scary.
They are like a gamble, one I am starting to think I am addicted to, except this time it wasnât only my gamble but my whole familyâs.
It forced me to think of all the crossroads I faced in my life, all the times I jumped into the unknown, me, my suitcases, and an unfettered faith in my gut. Paris 2000, Taiwan 2001, Fujian 2004, Shenzhen 2007, Hong Kong 2013. I am here, I showed up, now surprise me, life. And the surprises havenât always been great, Iâve had bitter moments as well, moments of solitude and regret. I didnât always make choices that were right for me, yet, the most meaningful lessons I have learned have come from standing in front of a crossroad and choosing a path. Not necessarily the straightest one. In fact, I might argue that some of the best views came after lots of twists and turns.
I am finishing this post three weeks into our Portugal adventure. We are still very much in the honeymoon phase, but I would lie if Iâd say itâs been an all smooth sail. Even here, surrounded by the beauty of this place, Iâve had moments in which I have questioned my choices. I have asked myself what brought me here. Another country that is not mine, another language I will have to learn. I asked myself if perhaps I wasnât tired of starting over, once again. Then I remembered the joyful hope with which we allowed ourselves to dream about this for the past year or so, even in the midst of one of the most challenging times of our lives. The quiet confidence in myself that somehow this was the right path for us to pursue, in this moment of our life. I just felt incredibly thankful for being given another opportunity, a new road to explore. It is too soon to say if we did the right thing taking it, but one thing is for sure, the views so far look pretty darn good.