#2 Does coincidence exist? I think not! (English)

Quitting your fixed job, booking a one-way ticket to Rome and putting your whole life in a large red suitcase to onboard a new adventure of which you only yet know its broad outlines requires a decent portion of courage. Right? At least that’s what everybody said when I told them about my plans. Somehow, to me it didn’t feel much like an act of extreme courage and I handled the little preparation needed (booking my flight ticket and an AirBNB flat for the first two months) very casually – in fact I booked it all returning from a night out. You might wonder if I’m such a cool person then that doesn’t burst from emotions when moving countries. The truth is, I’m not at all. However, I do believe a 100% that you should neither overthink nor overplan big life changing decisions like this one. Instead, I believe you should fully live in the present in which you embrace all those emotions that will certainly follow and most importantly to have an unquestionable faith that things will àlways turn out alright. When wholeheartedly believing this, beautiful things will come towards you automatically and life will tell you if you’re on the right path. It’s true! When I woke up for the very first time in my Roman bed that Monday morning it suddenly hit me. I really moved to Rome! And there they were, all these different emotions taking the better part of me. Because now what? There I was with all my big, though pretty vague, plans. However, one thing I did figure out and planned on already was the fact I want to create my own freelance job which would be my focus in the first two months. However, as an extrovert person that really needs people around her spending days behind my laptop at home is simply not for me. Therefore, I decided to reply to two little messages on Facebook. 

Call it a coincidence but in a city as big as Rome spread out over seven hills, this Italian family only lives two streets away

The first message was from a lady who was looking for an English teacher and babysitter for her twin girls. Call it a coincidence but in a city as big as Rome spread out over seven hills, this Italian family only lives two streets away. Perfect! And quite essential, because traveling to the other side of the city can easily take more than an hour. The young woman had lived all over the world and ended up being a successful architecture in New York where she then discovered to be pregnant. Of twins! And before I knew it, the whole real-life Italian soap opera was explained to me. I won’t go too much into details however the young mamma informed me about her necessary return to Italy and about all the key figures in the twins’ life and their complicated relationships. As the new babysitter it would be my job to act as a true Nanny McPhee with senior mediation skills whenever their father would show up to Rome or the ex-mother-in-law (and nonna) would want her part of the girls’ attention too. Well, a little bit of drama is what keeps life unpredictable and exciting plus considering the two girls – with their big black Bambi-eyes – are the cutest children I’ve ever seen, I decided to accept my new job with a big smile. 

This ‘dude’ with his vague profile photo turned out to be a successful business man living in an enormous penthouse right at the waterfront

The second message was from a guy who was looking for help packing child books into boxes. Right. Although this didn’t seem like an awesome job to me, I still decided to reach out. You never knew if it could turn out into a fun afternoon and perhaps it would leave me with a new friend (and a home-cooked Italian lunch). We decided to meet the next day straight away and walking there through the very charming neighborhood of Trastevere a cute little house caught my eye. I walked further but suddenly felt the urge to turn around again to take a photo of it. Looking at my iPhone’s screen I saw a male figure – who in fact looked very familiar – walking towards me right in front of the little house. Before I knew it I heard a loud ‘Ciao Annaaa!’ and that’s how I bumped into an old friend on the streets on my first walk into town. In a city of three million people! This spontaneous meeting led to a dinner and now I prefer taking my laptop to his restaurant to work from there over working from my slightly more boring desk at home. The perks of having a restaurant owner as a friend is that I get to try the dishes on the menu, a ‘job’ I obviously do without complaining. After our short meet-up at the street I had to hurry to my ‘boxes appointment’. However, when I buzzed the door a woman opened telling me she didn’t know about anything. The guy I had my meeting with wasn’t there due to an emergency meeting, however she asked me to stay around, in case he would come back soon. My first thought was – well Mister Boxes, letting me down already – however I decided to benefit from the situation and to enjoy my after-lunch caffè in the beaming sunshine. An hour later he called with a hundred apologies for being late begging me to still come to his place. Only minutes later I was completely amazed. This ‘dude’ with his vague profile photo turned out to be a successful business man living in an enormous penthouse right at the waterfront. And this was only one of the houses he inhabits. Proudly he presented the children’s books which were written by him and now I got even more amazed. Right before leaving to Italy, a friend back home showed me a personalized book she got for her 4^th birthday (back in 1995…) which she found back by coincidence. You can probably guess what I’m about to tell you now but the book this man was showing me here was nearly – of course a little modernized – the same. Incredible! Quickly I discovered these boxes of children’s books were not for just anyone, no, they were prepared to be sent to the ‘rich and famous’ of this planet (Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Adele, etc.). While talking I learned the man owned yet another company and he proudly showed me a slideshow of it. At the second page I literally started yelling. Not in a million years this could be true. A pair of very familiar eyes were staring at me from the screen. However, I didn’t know the man on that photo at all, but still I had fantasized a whole life for him. Wait, what? Right, so in my final months at my old employee in Holland I ran a project with a team. One of the guys in my team created this slideshow for our project, and the final slide would be composed of an overview of all the team members’ photos. However, of course everybody took ages to send in a photo of themselves and that’s why my colleague just copied in a completely random photo of a man he took from Google to use as a placeholder. Hence, every time we would do a test run of the presentation this man would stare at me from the last slide. At one point we sort of got ‘attached’ to him so we started to picture a whole life for him. He would definitely be American, married with two kids. A successful business man, however a little conservative, with this big American car. Oh, and a republican for sure. How crazy that now, in this insane apartment in Rome, I discovered his real identity: he turned out to be the business man of my new ‘boss’. A story I could have never even made up if it didn’t really happen. After two hours the business man and I were still involved in a conversation about his companies and I started to understand his urgent need for help as his bed time was regularly around 4 in the morning. Safe to say he could do with a personal assistant.

And that’s how I got myself two jobs in Rome, in my first three days being in the city in which I faced a whole lot of ‘coincidences’ on my path. How I felt about it? Awesome! But I also felt that anything is possible, maybe especially in a city of which people always tend to say finding a job is nearly impossible. However, you only attract these things when you completely give yourself in the new situation and when you’re not trying to overthink everything that happens. So does coincidence exist? I think not!