[ Sedona ] Serendipit(az)
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Fate used to be that unattainable fantasy. A fable from your childhood fairy tales conjured up by swollen ideas of romanticism and wildly colorful examples of perfect rhythm. But as you grew older, so did your cynicism with all of reality's inevitable brick walls, and fate was a silly thought you held onto for the sake of your inner child, but never truly believed in if it meant protecting your expected realism.
But I do believe that fate exists in the smallest sense. The way it teaches us to embrace each moment in its present form and to understand its fleeting nature the second we recognize it. And recently, I've had more encounters with fate than I've had with fear, and it's made me a child all over again--an innocent soul whose heart flutters at one of life's everlasting fables.
Arizona. How I do I even begin to turn your beauty into words? How do I describe the natural architecture crafted at the hands of history, evolution, and Mother Nature? Your deep reds and luscious greens dimmed in the low heat of the desert sun, breathing western air into my urban lungs. But what made me fall in love with you even more, were the stories you embedded into my naive life. The experiences that could only beheld true in my eyes and felt deeply in my shoes. From hour long drives with my best friend to risky opportunities for the perfect shot of views that will never be justified in photos, you've given me a unforgettable memories that I can store in my happiness vault to remind me that reality is more than living day to day, but living moment to moment. But most of all, you've given me fate to remind me that there is such thing as being in the right place at the right time. Like the night at a Navajo restaurant when my friend and I relinquished our famished selves after taking in incredible views of Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend, and still reliving the perfect moments of how our trip all came together so naturally. Traditional Navajo food and entertainment were the perfect cherries to top it all off, but the what truly made it wonderful was the moment the musician played a live cover of my favorite love song ever, "Can't Help Falling in Love" by Elvis Presley. Because for that four hour drive to Page from Phoenix, my best friend and I talked about our ideal wedding and I revealed to her that any time I heard a cover of this song, it made me fall in love with it more as the song I wanted played as my first dance. As cliche of a romance as it sounds, it's something I always knew I wanted as part of my love story. And the timing couldn't have been more perfect as I was still struggling with personal issues and was constantly searching for signs of validity and the courage to move forward. In that moment, as the first strums of the song played across that guitar and the musician mustered up his best version of it, I knew this was a sign from the universe--fate in its subtlest form--that I was meant to be exactly where I was. That I have found my perfect moment in time as a calling to my right path. That everything happened for a reason and I didn't have to fear trust in my decisions.
This wonderful happenstance of fate stirring up reality with dreams occurred two more times since then--one in my recent trip to Peru where I found myself sipping Peruvian coffee on a coffee shop balcony overlooking Cusco's Main Square on my last day in the country and Ed Sheeran (my favorite artist) echoed through the shop's speakers and another time when I arrived home from my trip, melancholic about facing harsh reality and my current situation, but I ran into my therapist randomly at my local coffee shop and I instantly felt it was a sign that things were going to be okay because she represented a safe haven in human form.
Serendipity is that silent secret that ushers sweet nothings into our cynic ears but makes us fall in love with fate in life's hindsight.
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