It was 2015. I was 24 years old, sitting on a pier overlooking Sydney harbor. A guy was sitting next to me, dangling his feet off the edge. He had blue eyes that sparkled in the moonlight.
We'd randomly met earlier that evening. He strode straight up to me and said hello. Then he asked me a question, and I asked him one back. And he asked me a question, and I asked him one back. And in the space of an hour, it felt like we'd talked for eternity.
He already had dinner plans with a group of friends that evening so he invited me along. We talked and laughed some more. Then we met up with some of my crew and wandered through the night markets together.
And then, when everyone split at 2 a.m, this stranger and I somehow found ourselves in a karaoke bar singing God-awful renditions of popular songs. We finally stumbled out of the bar after two rounds of incessant laughter.
"I don't want the night to end," he said as we exited the karaoke joint. "Want to go on another adventure?"
"Where to?" I asked. "The night is young and so are we."
"What's your favorite place? Where do you like to hang out?"
And that's how we ended up here, on the pier, overlooking the harbor. He sat next to me — a sharp mind, dripping in charisma, saturated in a je-ne-sais-quoi that I couldn't get enough of.
"What's your big dream?" I asked. "What have you always wanted to do?"
He smiled to himself as he stared up at the cosmos. "I want to move to France. I've always wanted to move to France, ever since I was a teen. I love the language and the culture and... I don't know. I just see myself there."
"So why don't you?" I asked. "Just do it. Just go."
"It's a bit complicated. I'm only working on my startup part-time at the moment. The French Tech Ticket program would be the perfect way to move there. The government gives you a four-year visa and some money. We applied last year but didn't get in-"
"Oh!" A connection fired in my brain. "I was in France in June-"
"Where?"
"In Toulouse."
"On holiday?"
"No. I was speaking at a conference. The CEO of the company that flew me out there is involved in the French Tech Ticket program."
"What's his name?"
"Benjamin," I replied. "I remember him telling me about it when we were hanging out in Albi. I can introduce you if you like. Maybe something will come of it. I have a feeling I met you for a reason, Jesse."
***
Four months flew by in the blink of an eye. We were tearing across the bay, just a few hours north of Sydney. Salty sea spray peppered our faces and splattered our mouths, which were laughing in giddy exhilaration.
We'd been staying at a friend's holiday house for the weekend with a big group of Jesse's mates. I was supposed to be working on my new business — a coding school for children — while we were there. But the weather was nice, and the sun was calling, so the previous day Jesse and I had spent nearly an hour playing with a pod of dolphins that stalked our little catamaran. They were so close we could reach out our hands and touch their soft skin as they laughed and swam beside us, and in front of us, and below us. Come this way, they'd silently squeal. Then we'd tack and catch the wind and follow their lead.
"Wanna go for a quick sail?" Jesse asked the very next day. "We can hang out with the dolphins again."
"I do, but I've got all this work to do."
"Come on," he coaxed. "Just a twenty-minute lunch break."
So there we were, the sun singeing our sweaty arms and the sea spraying our happy faces. The wind was incredible! We were flying! I don't think we'd ever gone that fast before! I looked back at Jesse, a big grin etched into his features. And then...
Bang!
What was that?
Something's wrong.
A second later, the mast fell down and hit the hull of the boat. The bearing had snapped. Damn physics.
We stopped moving.
"Well, this is awkward," Jesse joked. We looked around and realized were in between the heads of the bay, sitting on a current that flowed into the open ocean — an infinite sea of nothingness for thousands of miles. Oblivion.
The bay was a well-known breeding ground for underwater monsters, and there were no other boats around. We were at the mercy of nature — two reckless kids who'd just wanted to feel alive for twenty minutes on a lunch break.
"Oh well," Jesse laughed. "You wouldn't be the worst person to die with."
"Wouldn't that be a romantic tale," I sighed. "We could fade away into oblivion together. But if we don't want to do that, the shortest route to land is..." I swiveled around, surveying our bleak situation.
"Over there." He pointed towards some large, aggressive waves pummelling angry rocks on the shore. "It's either rocks, or sharks, or oblivion."
"Fuck oblivion!" I yelled. "It will be a treacherous journey full of ups and downs, but I think we can make it."
We barely made it.
Jesse's beloved catamaran crashed head-first into the rocks. It was shipwrecked — torn sail, broken bearings, holes in the hull.
As we sat on the deserted beach together, we watched the black letters of the boat's name peel off the side. Waves rhythmically smashed the dying vessel, stripping away its identity.
***
"I can't wait for our trip to Melbourne tonight!"
"What?!" I turned around. I was in Jesse's room. Algorithms, ideas, and mathematical workings were scrawled all over his mirrored closet doors in whiteboard marker. A couple of karate black belts lay on a chair next to some ski goggles and a hanging collared shirt — the standard attire at his day job in finance.
"Oh," Jesse said as the color drained from his face. "Brisbane is going to be amazing!"
It was my birthday weekend. He'd planned a surprise trip for us both. I didn't know where we were going.
"You totally messed up, didn't you?" I teased. "All that anticipation, gone in an instant!"
"No, I didn't! There are so many fun things to do in Adelaide!"
Throughout the day, my phone buzzed with messages suggesting adventures to go on in a variety of cities across Australia.
***
I was in a karaoke room in Shanghai, China, six months later. My co-founder, James, was busy talking to a group of friends. The rest of the room was filled with Chinese businessmen.
At the time, I was on the board of the Sydney not-for-profit co-working space I worked from. We'd just launched a project in Shanghai. It was wildly coincidental that the three men on the board had pregnant wives who were due to give birth around the time of the launch, and the other women on the board had prior commitments. The task fell on me to fly over and represent the organization.
So there I was, shaking hands and talking with our Chinese partners, singing karaoke, eating strange food, doing shots, being introduced to other locals in the Shanghai startup scene. I reveled in the culture shock.
A crew of entrepreneurs from the co-working space in Sydney decided to fly to Shanghai for the launch. They wanted to check out the business opportunities in China and have a bit of a party break.
One of those guys was Darren — a lovely Irish fellow whom I occasionally spoke to by the coffee machine. Then there was Dain, who'd built a successful mobile game.
Dain's lifestyle looked fun. He worked hard but had plenty of mobility to move around the world as he pleased. A few months prior, he and some other guys were having Friday night drinks at the co-working space in Sydney. Drinks turned into dinner, then shots, then dancing. In the wee hours of the morning, the group decided to fly to another country for the weekend. They all ran home and picked up their passports but no suitcase. Once they were at the airport, the drunken crew looked at the available tickets and got on the next flight to Japan. They arrived back in the office a few days later with plenty of wild stories. It sounded like a fun long weekend.
The lifestyle of my peers inspired me. They seemed to have a healthy balance between work and play. I'd always wanted to try the 'digital nomad' thing, but there were still a few challenges to figure out first. Jesse had his job in Sydney, and I'd also made a commitment to James. We were building CodeMakers together.
How did I meet James, you ask? Well, thousands of people emailed me about my viral failure post in 2014 — including him. James' email said something like, 'I read your story as I was looking out the window of my nice, cushy office. The next day, I walked in and quit my job. I finally took the plunge on the business I'd always wanted to start.' That business didn't work out for him. But then we both ended up at the same co-working space, became friends, and the rest is history.
***
I lazily flicked through a copy of The Art of War that lay on Jesse's coffee table. "I emailed them to you weeks ago," I replied as I turned another page. "Just search for my name in your inbox."
Jesse typed my name into his phone, then burst out laughing.
"What?"
"Look at this!" Jesse turned his phone around to reveal a short email from his mother.
Jesse. You should find yourself a girlfriend like her...
My viral failure story was attached to the email. The search query had highlighted my name.
She'd sent the email in 2014 — a good sixteen months before Jesse and I had met. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
***
"What do you think I should do?" Jesse asked as we ducked under a tree. We were on a midnight stroll.
"Do you want me to gently stroke your ego or do you want me to tell you what I really think?"
"They're mutually exclusive?" he cringed.
"Oh, I can artfully merge them together."
"Go on, then. Give it to me straight."
"Okay," I sighed. We stopped on the path and he looked at me. "I think you've been working on this business part-time for too long. I think you've been talking about moving to France and growing your business, but you're still dabbling on the side, safe and comfortable with the paycheck from your full-time job. You could go on like that forever. And someone is going to beat you to the punch. You'll have fun on the business and learn a lot, but I don't think it will be what you want it to be."
"Okay..." he said. "So what should I do?"
"Whatever you want to do," I shrugged. "Look, I'll be your mirror and tell you when your actions aren't lining up with what you say you want. But I'm not going to tell you what to do.
You just need to make a decision. Quit your job and really go for this business, or don't. If you quit your job, you're taking a risk so there's a chance you'll fail. But there's also a chance you'll achieve everything you ever dreamed of.
But if you don't quit your job, you'll be nice and comfortable and secure, but you're almost certainly going to fail relative to what you say you want. It's at that point where you need to commit to it or consciously accept that it's a fun side-project that might bring in a little money but isn't going to get you to France or doing all of those big things you dreamed of. Your life is not going to drastically change unless you do.
And hey — that's perfectly fine if that's what you want and what will make you happy. But I know you. And I know that's not what you want or what will make you happy. And I want to see you happy.
So that's what I think. I think you need to decide who you are in relationship to this. Just decide. Be like Alexander The Great — Nothing is worse than indecision. Be wrong. But be wrong, decisively. Or as I like to say — Make a decision, then make it the right decision.
And believe me — I'm not judging you for it. I know how hard it is. But if you don't make a decision, I see us having the same discussion in a year and you'll always be waiting, waiting, waiting for the time to be right. What if the time is right now? What if you go for it and back yourself? Jump off the cliff and assemble your wings on the way down. You're so capable. I know you can do it."
Jesse looked into my eyes. "I love you. You know that, right?"
"You've mentioned it a few times," I giggled.
"I just don't know if I'm ready to quit my job."
"Then ask your boss if you can drop to part-time and phase into it. It's a boutique firm. They won't want to lose you."
"But-"
I leaned in closer and kissed him. "Come on, Jesse," I whispered. "Save yourself from the oblivion of non-realization."
***
"Nikki? Are you there?" I heard Jesse's voice over the phone. It was January 2017. I'd just finished my 6 a.m. workout in the city and was walking through Chinatown, en-route to my co-working space. I was on fire, high on life, totally in my element. CodeMakers was taking off, my day-to-day work was enthralling, it was summertime in Sydney. The year was off to a brilliant start.
"Nikki," he said again. I could hear laughter and chatter in the background. Jesse was in a little apres ski bar in the French Alps. After being rejected from the French Tech Ticket program a few months earlier, he'd flown to France anyway for a pre-planned ski trip with his mates.
Skiing was his favorite thing in the world. He was the kind of guy who'd spend all day trekking up an off-piste mountain on foot just so he could ski down the untouched powder slopes for five minutes at the end of the day. I, on the other hand, was more of a chairlift, blue runs, and hot chocolate kind of girl. I'd stayed in Australia to nurse my little startup baby. I couldn't afford to take time off, anyway.
"Are you there?" Jesse asked once more.
"Yeah, I'm here." I felt numb. A tear trickled down my face. A lump was forming in my throat. I looked around. There were hardly any people on the street. I walked over to the stoop of a store and sat down.
"I know it's a shock," Jesse said. "I'm shocked too. After we were rejected, Benjamin's team kept advocating for us until we got into the program. I'm moving to Toulouse."
I'd introduced Jesse to Benjamin the day we met. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
"When — when do you have to leave?" I stuttered.
"They want me there tomorrow. But I can't do that. I'm going to fly back to Australia, pack up my stuff, and fly back to France a week later. I just... God, this is hard. This is everything I wanted. I've been dreaming about moving to France for a decade. But I just... I don't want to leave you."
Tears silently rolled down my face. "I'm really proud of you," I said as I stared off into the distance. A delivery man arrived in front of me. He began unloading boxes for the shop next door. I looked away.
"I'll do anything you want to do," Jesse said. "We could do long distance if you want to do long distance. We can still be together."
"No, Jesse. We've talked about this. If you leave, then we break up." I didn't disclose the second half of that catch-22: And if you give up this incredible opportunity to stay with me, then you're not the person I fell in love with.
I burst into tears after he hung up. That was cruel, I told the universe. He got rejected from the program. He wasn't going to leave. We got closer than ever. And then, once I was raw and vulnerable, you stabbed me in the heart! You broke it into a thousand pieces! You ripped him away like that when I was least expecting it! Was that necessary? Did it need to happen that way? Couldn't he have left before I allowed myself to love him?
There is order in the chaos, Wisdom whispered. Just ride out the storm. The wound is the place where the light enters you.
And I truly did believe that. I really did. Emotionally, I was a wreck. But rationally, I saw only opportunity. This was my time to pursue some dreams of my own, uninhibited by the wants and needs of a partner.
You see, for the past few months, I'd been having another recurring vision. In this one I was wandering; traveling; walking through vast open landscapes with a sword in my hand. And it's not that Jesse wasn't in the vision. It's that nobody was. It was just me and this ornate, mysterious sword.
Deep down, I knew there was a journey I needed to go on alone.
***
"Nikki!" Jackie screamed in excitement as she ran up to me. "You made it! And what's this?" She pointed to my cake.
"I made you a unicorn cake," I said. I couldn't wait for her to see the inside.
Jackie looked around the packed room in giddy shock. "That's... that's so sweet of you. No one's ever done that for me before. How long did it take you to make this?"
"All day. I started at 6 a.m."
"You spent all day on this for me?"
"Yeah, of course. I thought you might need some cheering up. Plus, you and James are about to go on a big adventure together. That's worth celebrating!"
I glanced over at James. He was looking at Jackie the way Jesse used to look at me.
I flashed back to a year earlier, chatting with Jackie on her bed. She'd said, "I just want someone to look at me the way Jesse looks at you." It was a rare moment of vulnerability from her. She always seemed so strong and independent. But at that moment, her armor melted.
And now, at this crossroad in our lives, the tables had turned. Jesse had left several months earlier. In the same week as his sudden departure, James handed back all of his equity in CodeMakers and left me as a single founder. Then he packed up his stuff and prepared to follow Jackie to the US.
And there I was at 25 years old, standing at their farewell party, thinking, I just want someone to look at me the way James looks at Jackie. I wondered if someone could ever love me like that again. I wondered if someone could ever see right through me like he did — see all my messy imperfection and still look at me like I was the most magnificent creature to ever walk the planet.
As it turns out, I was the one who introduced James to Jackie the previous year — just like I'd introduced Benjamin to Jesse. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
***
"It's like, I love you... but I'm not in love with you anymore." A tear trickled down my face.
I glanced up to see Jesse sitting beside me in a Sydney cafe. It was 2019. I was 27 years old.
He looked away for a moment, then back at me with those ocean eyes. "Don't worry, Nikki. I know exactly what you mean."
It had been two years since I last saw him. Two years since he'd boarded that plane and exited my life so suddenly, fulfilling his own call to adventure while my own world crumbled around me.
And now that he was back in Sydney for a week, all that unfinished business rose to the surface. I could still talk to him for hours. It still felt as natural as ever — like nothing had changed.
And yet, everything had changed. I wasn't the same person I was when I was twenty-five. I was different. He was different. He had a new girlfriend in France. I'm sure she is lovely. I want him to be with someone lovely. I want the world for him.
But I want the world for myself too. And at that junction in my life when he took off into the wind... well, I wasn't going to move to France for him. I had my own dreams and goals and aspirations to fulfill. So I took God's advice:
Yea, let all those who have ears to hear, listen. For I tell you this: at the critical juncture in all human relationships, there is only one question:
What would love do now?
No other question is relevant, no other question is meaningful, no other question has any importance to your soul.
Now we come upon a very delicate point of interpretation, for this principle of love-sponsored action has been widely misunderstood — and it is this misunderstanding which has led to the resentments and angers of life — which, in turn, have caused so many to stray from the path.
For centuries you have been taught that love-sponsored action arises out of the choice to be, do, and have whatever produces the highest good for another.
Yet I tell you this: the highest choice is that which produces the highest good for you.
As with all profound spiritual truth, this statement opens itself to immediate misinterpretation. The mystery clears a bit the moment one decides what is the highest “good” one could do for oneself. And when the absolute highest choice is made, the mystery dissolves, the circle completes itself, and the highest good for you becomes the highest good for another.
It may take lifetimes to understand this — and even more lifetimes to implement — for this truth revolves around an even greater one: What you do for your Self, you do for another. What you do for another, you do for the Self.
This is because you and the other are one.
And this is because…
There is naught but You.
When I was 25 years old, I loved Jesse. But I loved me more.
The game gave me a choice.
I chose myself.
And the consequence of that was this, right here. We were both doing what we dreamed of doing when we were together. We just happened to be doing those things apart.
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.