Everyone is responsible for the page-turning tempo of his or her Life Story,’ Dad said, scratching his jaw thoughtfully, arranging the limp collar of his chambray shirt. ‘Even if you have your Magnificent Reason, it could still be dull as Nebraska and that’s no one’s fault but your own. Well, if you feel it’s miles of cornfields, find something to believe in other than yourself, preferably a cause without the stench of hypocrisy, and then charge into battle. There’s a reason they still put Che Guevara on T-shirts, why people still whisper about The Nightwatchmen when there’s been no evidence of their existence for twenty years.

But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else’s story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptations. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don’t care what those themes are — they’re yours to uncover and stand behind — so long as, at the very least, there is courage. Guts. Mut, in German.

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Think about why you’re there. Not like the reason, but the mechanics of it. You are at the extreme end of millions of moving bureaucratic parts and millions of dollars stretched over thousands of miles that reached all the way to middle of nowhere Rwanda - but it’s a machinery you’re part of, that you can manipulate and send back messages to and manipulate and do whatever you want. You have internet so you could theoretically send things to people, surprises, oddities, missives, anything. There’s a game to be played in there somewhere.

It’s pretty awesome to be where you are. It’s a place that will bring in new people into your life, who, through the selection process, will be adventurous smart and fun. You’ve basically won.

Alex Ellsworth, a former New Yorker living in Seoul, South Korea, wrote:

Studying and living abroad has been a fantastic journey spanning 12 years and three continents.

But … expat life has a dark side: getting stuck in limbo, neither here nor there. I’ve watched as peers back home have married, had children, bought houses, advanced in their careers. Meanwhile, most of us here in Seoul find ourselves living Peter Pan-like existences. I’m entering middle age with nothing tangible to show for it.

Except wonderful, rich memories, sure. But the future looms.

So should I go home pre-emptively and try to build a life there? But therein lies the expat’s problem: there’s nothing back home for me now. Home is not “back home”; home is Seoul. My life is here.