On Deciding Fate

You may think you’ve heard a story similar to this one: perhaps in a film, or by association when a friend asked you to be his wing-man while he strategized the introduction to an attractive stranger, or you might have experienced it firsthand and taken action on Missed Connections – “We met on the uptown A train. You were wearing a gray shirt and a hat. We talked about my time as an ambulance driver in Italy and your motorcycle ride across South America. I was getting up the courage to ask for your number when my stop came up. If you read this, meet me at Grand Central Station Sunday morning under the big clock. I’ll be the one wearing Coke bottle glasses.” The red string of fate looks as if mysteriously playing a part, weaving the flirtatious notions of fatefully meeting, re-meeting, or never meeting again.

It was November 1, about 11 in the evening, on the 1 train. There was an over-intoxicated man dancing with the subway poles like a surrealist Fred Astaire, and two of us there to witness the glory of his improvised choreography. My sober comrade and I, instantly brought together by the humor, met eyes. For some unexplainable reason astonished to notice his eyes were blue, I smiled. Never mind his teasing opening line as he changed his seat to be next to mine (before the train took on passengers that might have taken it, he later says) and my airy response that would have made Cher from Clueless proud. The important part to note is that James and I rode the train from Lower Manhattan, consciously passing both our stops, up to the end of the line in the Bronx and back down again. Before long, I lost the initial self-consciousness of being in the presence of this handsome, warm, and clever stranger under glaring fluorescent MTA lights in the aftermath of a sleepless New York Halloween. My approximate feeling was that he and I could have stayed on the train long enough for it to have made a trip to Fez and back, and it would have been too short a ride. It was just past 1 o’clock that I found myself walking home, instantly receiving a text (“You’re gorgeous and awesome, and I can’t wait to see you again.”) and unhesitatingly confirming that we will meet again in a couple of days.

One of the things made clear during the sometimes-heated subway discussion that ranged from backyard fig trees to socialism to I-haven’t-told-anyone-this-before stories to the Khmer Rouge to career paths (not necessarily in that order) is that neither of us depended on Destiny. It was a crucial time in both our lives, and for the most part our peers found comfort in one of two philosophies: that things happen for a reason, people come in and out of one’s life according to Providential schedule, or that it was up to the individual to carve and sculpt the way through life and circumstance. We the both of us belonged to the latter crew. I certainly did not read into any numerological signs of our meeting (11/1 from 11pm to 1am on the 1 Train – is he the One?). To top it off, I was leaving New York in three weeks, when my glamorous stint as an unpaid intern would come to an end, and my next move was unclear – it could be Silicon Valley or it could be more unpaid stints in countries whose technological infrastructure discouraged the pursuance of western meet-cutes.

As far as I was concerned, what took place was not a predetermined lockstep of two people in a transcendental waltz, but a series of decisions, to which we cognitively said yes. Yes to a second date at a small kitschy café in the Flatiron, where decorations from every holiday known to man and beast come to live in the offseason, yes to a first kiss in Madison Square Park, yes to meeting his entire family after just two weeks, and, ultimately, yes to taking a 27-day-old relationship to a long 3,000-mile distance.

I owe the confidence behind the decision largely to the strength of our spiritual, intellectual, and physical connection and also to the knowledge that it was logistically doable – in fact, definitely more doable than what I had experienced before. While my connection to James was unprecedented, the challenge of long distance was not. Shortly after I was born in provincial Philippines, my father moved across the Pacific to California to better support my mother and me. He visited home for two weeks every year for 10 years, the most vacation he could get, until we could get the papers approved to join him. Since telephone circuits did not then yet reach our village, my mother and I would go to the capital city every Sunday to use my cousin’s phone and speak to him for a few meager minutes. Considering how many husbands did not return, and how many wives did not wait, it was clear that my parents’ marriage was based on an everyday decision to stay together, albeit metaphorically, sustained by weekly signal-challenged calls and fortnight visits. Day-long waiting lines at the US embassy in Manila and repeat denials of visas gave me front row seats to watch how relationships survive through decided action. Inevitability is perseverance in retrospect. A decade later, after an unwavering stream of petitions to the US government, my mother and I received the green light to join my father.

So James and I stayed together when I moved to the West Coast primarily because we loved each other and also because we resolved it could be done. To keep our feet firmer on the ground, we established a caveat that come the following January, we would have a conversation deciding whether or not we should go on. It was a fair, logical plan. It was two free will enthusiasts at work.

Our fundamental trust in indeterminism only enhanced the experience we now shared with each other. We accepted our individual histories not as imperative occurrences designed for us to ultimately collide but as personal adventures, useful lessons that we could use to forge our togetherness. In those short weeks, and in the longer months ensuing, I decided that James, then 29, was really about 183 years old, give or take a couple of decades. I believe this is probably his third lifetime, having spent the last two in quiet observation of human and individual conditions and growing very old and wise in doing so. In my musings, I imagined a well-made shack near the shore of a rocky sea with tumultuous waves, where he has everything he needed and little more. My reasons for this theory are many-fold, stemming not least from his exceptional knowledge of himself and his very real appreciation of genuineness and recognition of inauthenticity in others from a mile away. I, on the other hand, woke up most mornings not unlike Bambi learning how to walk, except carrying less grace and definitely more consequences with my actions. His seemingly old soul had me mindfully anchored, and my idealisms kept him on whimsy. Rather than taking these flights of imagination to conclude that the Moirae, the Parcae, or the million other synonyms used across cultures and time, finally converged our souls’ journey to meet on the subway and fall in love, what I instead found reassuring was that my daydreams emphasized the sublime romance of the rationale of our pairing. It was therefore up to us to see through the commitment we made. It could work, it could not work – the decision was ours.

January came, and we agreed to delay our impending caveat conversation to March. March came and went, and we resolved to further postpone to a date that was more nebulous, but still in the near future. We did not take it for granted that things were going to effortlessly work out for us because it was written in the stars; we always knew that it would do so as long as we chose for it to. For close to a year, we lived on weekend visits, haiku texts, emails attached with good morning greetings in .mp4 video files. We had our disagreements over Skype and fought over the phone, made more frustrating by faulty reception on San Francisco hills. Finally, in October (long after we had done away with the caveat) the day came – I was going back to New York. Six months later, on a quiet Philippine shore off the South China Sea, he decided to ask the question that would signify our willingness to be Meant To Be always, and I blissfully decided to say yes.

Looking back, it truly has been a journey of delirium and reason to be marrying a man I met on November 1, at 11pm, on the 1 Train. It definitely evokes a spectrum of responses – many car-loving Southern Californians are mortified, San Franciscans, with their relatively clean public transportation, are amused, and a number of New Yorkers have begun rethinking their “keep eyes on shoes” approach to the subway. Given how we met and the straining lengths through which we stayed together, it is typically a consensus thought that the invisible, generous, magical hand of Fate must have had a role. The way I see it, with global climate change to reverse, Tibet to free, rampant population growth to control, if Fate is at work here, I will not take offense nor be appalled if It puts matchmaking and choosing mates for earthly souls lower on the to-do list. Best-case scenario, at least we’ve given It one less thing to worry about. James and I, with hearts and minds and bells on, have chosen our paths – that is, each other.