What if you hadn't?
Last night I found myself in an Irish pub in Bangkok.
Not too surprising. There's an Irish pub everywhere. I'm reliably informed there's even one on the moon. Of course, the heads on lunar Guinness are outrageous with the 1/6th gravity problem.
Last night I was hanging out with two friends.
Among other topics, our conversation turned to very low-level programming. We talked about stack frames, relative addressing, x86 vs PIC, RISK-V, compiler design, 16-bit jump limits when we were kids.
It was enthralling. I don't need to tell you that – I'm sure your heart is beating as fast as mine was.
We spoke all night in Esperanto.
PS: talking about those subjects really raises the question of whether I can, in fact, fluently speak any language!
Among the three of us were three different native languages (Italian, German and *raises hand, lowers head* English).
This could have never happened had I not moved to Barcelona in the pandemic.
Wait… what? Why?
In the pandemic I decided I wanted to speak only Esperanto and escape the UK's lockdown. So I moved to Barcelona and hung out with my Esperanto friends there. I spoke no English. My Esperanto improved. A lot.
But had I not lived with 250 Esperanto speakers in Liptovský Mikuláš in Slovakia, you'd have never found me in Barcelona!
This is getting silly now.
A couple of years prior to Barcelona, I decided to spend a week living in an old soviet-era high school building with around 250 speakers and learners of Esperanto.
We'd all wake up each morning at 7am, head to class and study until 1pm, and then spend the rest of the day socialising, playing games and getting drunk.
I'm looking at you, Tatratea. Do you remember what you did to me?
I made so many friends that week, and I took my level of Esperanto from "oh, cool, I think I want to learn a bit more of this" to "damn, speaking English again feels a bit weird."
But had I not...
Don't you do it again, Martin! I've got things to do today!
Had I not hung out all weekend in Aberystwyth in Wales the year before, you'd have never found me in Slovakia.
I went to a little weekend event in the charming Welsh town. I'd heard people were going to be speaking this weird language I'd been reading about on Wikipedia.
It was in Wales that it really hit me. Esperanto isn't just a Wikipedia entry, but a language people actually learn, and speak, and make friends in…
Oh and sometimes also babies – one of the guys from last night is a native speaker of Esperanto. In fact I have a few different friends who are "denaskuloj".
A point? Yes, of course I do. This isn't TikTok, be patient. PS: well done if you got this far. Here, have some water.
While walking home last night, it occurred to me that there are so many dots all connected by completions to the repeating statement "had I not..."
When I discovered Esperanto's Wikipedia page in 2017 , I had no clue I'd be sat in Bangkok 7 years later talking about compiler design with yet another cool new friend in Esperanto. I had no idea I'd have another language I sometimes dream in.
I could tell the same story of how I came to enjoy compilers, or low-level programming, or bodybuilding. None of it happened according to any kind of plan.
The only explanation is that it happened due to a profound freedom I continually give myself to follow my curiosity, to play around with things, to have fun.
"Had I not..." is a calling. It's a manifesto of living in every direction at the same time, driven by curiosity and a desire to learn and experience as many things as possible.
The position you find yourself in at some future point will almost certainly connect back to a chaotically unpredictable set of completions to "had I not..."
So, do more things.
Do them without expectations or goals.
Nurture and follow your curiosity like it might kill you if you don't. It won't be long before serendipity will invite itself to the party, and it has some pretty good tricks.