A blessing in disguise

My friend Meg was whining to me about that guy we met on a group dinner in Bali some months back. It was a beautiful setting of delicious Indo food, plated right in front of the sunset that was showing off with its pomegranate shades. Meg and me, a friend of mine and the guy in question, sharing a bite, a stunning view and a great conversation. The man Meg was talking to was indeed smart, handsome, successful, I could see how he could be “a catch.” The setting was ideal for a first meet up with me, being Meg’s comfort stick, and the rest of the atmosphere being beautiful and relaxing enough to invite quality conversations. I observed that Meg and the man kind of clicked- they were talking, laughing, enjoying the music that was playing.

After one too many bottles of champagne and a slice of gluten-free chocolate cake (I mean it’s Bali after all), we hopped on Meg’s scooter and went back home. During the ride we were talking about the fun we had and my friend shared that she really fancied the guy. From what I could tell, the feeling was mutual, and I shared this with her.

A few days after, me and Meg went to a yin yoga class followed by an early dinner. She shared her disappointment about not having received a call, a text or any other indication from the guy we had met on that dinner. I was also a little surprised, but taking a non-affected bird eye view I could see how Meg was the actual catch and how that was not a big deal at all. Meg was young, beautiful, smart. She was practicing and teaching yoga back in Bali, but when back in Berlin, she was an absolute marketing master, working for top companies like Nike, Puma and more, having a coveted position. With or without a text or a call, she was absolutely awesome and this was as obvious as a full moon on a clear night.

Of course Meg couldn’t see what I was seeing at this moment and fell into the familiar self-doubt path, sharing with me that maybe she didn’t show him enough interest, that maybe he didn’t actually like her (even though the contrary was obvious to everyone on the table), and all those other maybes. Cutting her there, I told her that it was absolutely pointless to go through that mental monologue. For all we knew, that guy could be happily married back in Hong Kong, where he flew from. Little did we know that my joke about his potential life back home was the absolute truth. The man flew to Bali to visit his friend and surf some barrels, he didn’t go into detail about his life back home during the dinner conversation. Well, besides being a successful hedge fund manager, he was also very married with a child on the way.

It’s funny how knowing only half of the story, it’s so easy to always look for the fault within us. We didn’t do something right, we weren’t the best version of ourselves then, we could have done something differently. A rabbit hole that leads to self-criticism avenue and unhappiness street. A wrongly made conclusion based on too few details.

It could be non-intuitive and hard, yet it’s so liberating to actually accept that a certain chain of events could be truly nobody’s fault. What’s meant to be eventually finds you and what’s not meant to be- doesn’t. Someone not calling you back could be a an absolute blessing in disguise. Imagine- he could be the guy that loves pineapple on pizza.