Oscar Wilde once wrote “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” What a trip the last few years have been. When I turned 44, my life as I knew it completely exploded in what felt like an instant and I found myself, in many respects, back at square one. 45 was a year of healing, perspective, acceptance, and growth. And yesterday I turned 46 knowing now more than ever that resilience, faith, and a little time can help anyone feel as though we’re a little closer to the stars.

If this is the only life I get to live in this body, I wanna make it count every moment.

And part of what I’ve learned about making it count is to find and face the good stuff, then lean in all the way.

My sweetie asked me sometime in March what I’d like to do for my birthday while we were in Ireland. After a few weeks of researching my options, careful consideration of haunted pub tours, Viking duck boats, and Sting in concert at Malahide Castle, I decided on a private tour from Dublin to the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland.

It was the most bougie thing I’d ever conceived of doing for myself…but, if I’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that life is far too short to settle or delay doing what my heart tells me I really want to do. And everything in my heart and soul told me I really wanted to do this.

So, it was disappointing to learn at 11pm the night before that our driver had to cancel due to a personal emergency. I sent him a message of concern and prayers for his family… I know damn well what emergencies feel like…and I know all too well that my birthday car ride certainly isn’t the center of the universe.

We woke up and went to breakfast at this place we’d passed walking around on our first day in the city. And while we were sitting outside trying to figure out how to spend the day in Plan B mindset, it started to rain. Because of course it did. Thanks universe.

I did take some time to sit with my feelings of disappointment. Cancelled plans, it’s raining, and I’m old. And then I spent some time wondering what it might mean in the big picture. What was the universe trying to teach me? What lesson can I find in things that don’t work out as I wanted or planned? And why does it feel harder to accept when things don’t work out on my birthday?

We met a 20-something guy at a neighboring table from South Africa who just flew into Dublin this morning and decided on the plane that he wants to move here, right now, immediately. He had his laptop all set up, breakfast barely touched in front of him, and he told us he was too nervous to eat because he was waiting on a zoom call for a job interview that would potentially determine whether or not he gets to stay. He’d spent his whole life working in his dad’s restaurant…and now he’s here sitting next to us in this very Alchemist moment trying to step into his destiny. This would be his first ever real job interview. And then his laptop died. So now his phone is all set up and he’s sitting outside and it’s raining and he’s only got two nights booked at the hostel. And omg how is this story gonna play out?

The moments when we are invited into someone’s thoughts, their struggles, their conflicts, their dreams and wishes, become genuine opportunities for us to temporarily step into their reality and walk beside them. I know that fear. I know that courage. I know that excitement and anticipation. I know that hope of dreams coming true.

He took his zoom call as we were settling the bill, so we’ll never know how it all turns out for him, but I think he found his way onto our path today to serve as a reminder: at any given moment, we are surrounded on all sides by people who are quietly and courageously trying to show up for themselves, trying to figure out how to fly, sometimes even while the airplane is still being built, and trying to step into a life they want by following what feels the most true.

We decided to do a hop on/hop off bus tour for the day. If I couldn’t spend my birthday looking at the ocean from enormous cliffs, I wanted to spend it doing nerdy learning stuff. So we learned a bunch of stuff about Dublin and stayed dry and out of the rain.

We saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the park where he used to stand and convert people. We went by a few distilleries, saw the Guinness empire, found out there’s a zoo and a really big park here, a couple cool statues, we realized we don’t really know how to interpret modern art and learned that the James Joyce bridge, designed to look like an open book, is known by locals as “the sad taco”.

And then we went to see Oscar Wilde…because he’s rad and one of my faves. And we talked about Dorian Grey as we walked through the park across the street from the house he grew up in.

And the sun came out as we made our loop around town. We stopped at a fun spot, a popular gay bar, aptly called Pantibar, for pre-dinner cocktails.

And then dinner. Dear universe, I whole-heartedly believe now that the reason my birthday tour was canceled is so that we could share this beautiful and delicious meal on a special occasion. I don’t know if I would have justified something so indulgent on any other day.

The restaurant was recommended to me by a coworker who happened to have a trip to Dublin booked with her daughter the week before we’d be here. And we must’ve had dozens of conversations since February about what to pack and where to go and what to do and how excited we all were. And she texted me last week from the Dublin airport to share some of the details of her trip, since neither of us had any idea what to expect. She said she found a steakhouse they ended up eating at three different times while they were here.

So with birthday plans thwarted, I made a reservation from the bus…and I love that I got to text her pictures from the place she recommended…because how cool does that feel when you extend a recommendation to someone and they actually take it and do it…and love it???

We started with oysters and cocktails unlike any we’ve ever tried before. And then a very fancy looking four leaf Caesar salad, some fresh bread and chateaubriand, which we had to order by the gram, and I actually didn’t know much about it other than it seemed really fun to say. Some French wine, creamed spinach, bernaise on the side. And whatever the heck dessert was…a cake with this amazing toffee sauce and a big scoop of —not ice cream—but straight up butter on top. My sweetie said it tasted like Christmas morning…

On our walk back to the hotel, we were approached by a woman who asked if we had any money to spare, she told us she was homeless and struggling. We didn’t have cash, but asked if she was hungry and then gave her the chateaubriand and bread we’d taken to go.

There was a guy standing out in front of our hotel with his lady friend who cracked a couple jokes with us after catching parts of our conversation as we approached the lobby entrance. We had a quick laugh with them and said goodnight as we got on the elevator.

There’s a skybridge that stretches over the front of the hotel on the second floor that we have to cross to get to our room. A little tipsy, (see above photo with spoon on my nose) I crossed the skybridge in strides of deep lunges to make my sweetie laugh…and she pointed out that our new friend, still down below with his lady friend, caught me in the act…and so we’re all hysterical laughing, once again exchanging happy goodnights.

There’s more days to this trip and more lessons ahead for me to learn, but here’s what I know right now as we get ready for our rescheduled tour to the Cliffs of Moher today: I am truly happy.

Oscar Wilde asked, “With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”

And I couldn’t agree more.