Epiphany: It Would Have Made No Difference

On the things we often beat ourselves up over instead of living in the present.

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Every so often Life may pull back the curtain and reveal a layer of truth that brings an unexpected dose of peace.

When I was in my 20’s I had an incredible job – I was a trip director for a large travel agency that sent groups of professionals to a tropical paradise for continuing education.

I “worked” in luxury hotels in Mexico, Hawaii and around the Caribbean telling tourists what time the glass bottom boat left and making sure they knew where to shop and golf.  As cool as the job was, because all my expenses were paid, I still managed to complain about the guests.

That was until my father, who was treasurer of the travel agency (who would have guessed), set me straight, “you will never live like this again,” he urged me, “Enjoy every minute.”

Of course, at that time, in the 70’s, every male’s fantasy was Playboy and Penthouse, and I spent my off hours trying to live the Playboy “philosophy”.

In some of the resorts, there would always be single women and that was where my attention generally went.  I often worked at a desk overlooking the lobby, so I saw who was coming and going.

My Education on Marriage

Some of my “colleagues” who were much more “successful” with women than me also took chances and tried to connect with the guests’ wives, but I was much too careful for that.

I also remember when I got to the Bahamas and I would ask a local guy if he was married and they all would reply, “She’s married, I’m not.”  Yes, I was steeped in toxic masculinity.

But I would often remember how on one trip to Acapulco for physicians, one of the doctor’s wives was just a knock-out, but I kept my distance.

With that group it was my turn to accompany the group to the airport for departure and on this trip it turned out the knock-out wife was actually not a wife at all.  Shocker.

As I sat in the front seat of the bus to the airport making jokes over the audio system, she suddenly sat down next to me.  That’s when she told me that she and her guy were just friends.

I don’t remember many other details of our conversation, but she seemed very interested in me, but of course, an hour or so later I saw her plane take off.

Did I get her phone number or surreptitiously slip her my business card – did I even bring my “Head Trip Director” business card?

The answer is no. 

And on a trip to Los Angeles a while later I saw her on television; it turned out that she was an actress with whom I would have loved to connect when I moved out west.

I Never Could Find Her

But her name was very very common and I had no way to find her.  Believe me, I tried.  Many today will not be aware that there were once very thick phone books in most hotel rooms and I would find dozens with her name.

I am 74 now and many times over the years I beat myself up for not being more aggressive in connecting with her.

So a week or so ago while resting, which I do a lot, I had a nice memory of that bus ride and her name came back to me along with a few details.

I had Googled her before and had no luck presumably because her name was so common but when I got up and on my laptop I actually found her.

Of course, by now she would also be 70 and almost certainly a grandmother but I was curious.

A Twist of Fate

There it was. An obituary with her history revealing the one detail that I recalled of her past. Not surprisingly she had been a beauty queen and there it was in the story.

As I read on, a feeling of peace came over me, as I realized from her later life that we would have never connected in the way I fantasized.

She had married a pastor.

It was clear to me immediately that my years of flagellating myself over not “getting to know her” had been wasted.

The way it had gone was the only way it could have been.

My fantasies about other scenarios had been just that. Probably just electricity in my brain.

That realization was a great source of relief because I could also connect it to so many other times when I had “screwed up” – often in ways I deemed much more important than getting a date – even though many times getting a date had been the focal point of my existence.

If Life was truly infinitely intelligent, as I have written about here quite often as a hypothesis that makes sense based on unnumerable clues that many humans overlook, then this revelation was a truly benign clue.

It not only provided a bit of peace about an issue that had been torturing me to some degree over the years, but it also suggested that finally, everything I’ve experienced may truly have just led me perfectly to this moment.

And continuing to do what I did as a young man into my 70’s – not appreciating what I do have at this moment – would doom me to misery.

I decided I’d had enough misery and went with what Eckhart Tolle suggests.   I looked around and counted my blessings, and I thanked the Universe for showing me in tangible form one of the big illusions that had caused me to suffer.

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(Tom Bunzel was a contributor to Collective Evolution and now writes for The Pulse.  His new book "Conversations with Nobody: Getting to Know ChatGPT" – a book written with AI, about AI and giving a taste of AI, is available on Amazon.)