Yesterday, I traveled to Bedugul, a small town in Bali that doesn't get that many tourists. When I arrived, I walked down to the lake and checked into a place called The Ashram. There are 27 rooms at The Ashram. When I checked in, I was the only person there. The guy at the counter randomly grabbed a key and showed me to my room.
I dropped my bags, sat down on the bed, and started unpacking the few things that I needed. While I was doing this, something in the corner of my eye caught my attention.
When I first looked at the room to see if it was ok, I noticed that people had carved their names on the door and on the rickety, old furniture inside the room, but I didn't really give it much thought. As I sat there unpacking, I guess that I could see the bedpost clearly enough in my peripheral vision that I subconsciously read what was carved on it. Because before I even turned my head, I knew what it said.
There in a dusty, old, rundown room in a little, untouristed town in central Bali was my last name clearly carved on the bedpost to the bed I now found myself sitting on.
Now, if my last name were Smith or Jones, I might agree that this isn't the absolute craziest thing that could happen to someone, but my last name is Gaines and that's not that common, so this is the absolute craziest thing that could happen.** Talk about serendipity!
At that moment, I knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be in the world. The only question that remained was who was this Gaines that came before me and left their name for me to find?
**I really can't properly convey how mindbogglingly strange this was!! It was so strange that it was like something out of a sci movie. I started having weird thoughts about whether I had mastered teleportation and time travel in the future and had come here before and left myself a message by carving my name on the bedpost of this secluded lakeside room or perhaps I was inside the matrix and had left myself this note as a sign or perhaps I was having a total recall experience - was this real or was this recall or... yea, there's really an endless list of scenarios here, but you get the point.
