What Bali Taught Me About Fulfillment

I have a heart to open and disappointments to mend after learning that the life plan I had mapped out for myself might not be right. 

I had always assumed I wanted to be a New York corporate girl, the girl in the crisply ironed suit you could see chattering about business outside the Lexington Avenue skyscrapers or toasting to freshly completed reports over pricey cosmos in the bars of upper Manhattan. 

This part of my identity, something I always assumed I wanted to be, started to crumble when I was wrapping up my first corporate contract and started to realize that something about the lifestyle didn’t feel quite right. 

With the unanticipated pangs of doubt over my life map, I pulled out my world map to plot course for Bali, the bucket list destination that had always seemed like a beacon of light and place of refuge for the downtrodden and distressed. 

After a whirlwind of trans-Pacific flights and bumping around island roads in unmarked taxis, I’ve finally reached Ubud. 

Ubud was the Indonesia I had come to see, with main roads full of the endless buzzing of scooters, bantering merchants and cracked sidewalks with coconut shells rotting beneath. Turn onto a side street and you’ve hit the island suburbs.

There are family estates with garden courtyards and gates lined with intricate black and gold carvings. 

Offerings of flowers and woven banana leaves and incense are strewn across the streets. I walk along the rice paddies, dodging the free range chickens and stray dogs on my way. 

The locals throw random English phrases at me as I walk by the farms and little shops, I smile in response. I can’t help but feel intrusive, like I’ve somehow tried to exploit the island’s history for my own selfish ends.