A Spirit Date
Last October, I was at a group dinner with friends—some new, some old—and someone asked me and my friend Richard Christiansen how we first met. I explained that we had actually met almost a decade ago, when I wrote a story about him and some other Australians for Marie Claire, but that he didn’t really remember me. And then we encountered each other on a work project maybe five years after that, but very briefly. At the time, Richard and his creative agency, Chandelier, were doing much of the most compelling branding work around. I’ve always admired him as a visionary genius. Flash forward to the beginning of COVID, when Richard asked me for a call. I didn’t know why, and I hate talking on the phone, but was happy to oblige. We stayed on the line for two hours, talking about books like Erosion by Terry Tempest Williams, our collective runaway consumption habits, the point of life. Shortly after, he sent me a box of vegetables and honey from Flamingo Estate, the gorgeous brand that he spun up in the first months of the pandemic, and we started talking regularly. And then traveling together. In the span of a year, or months really, he became one of my very closest friends—in fact, I didn’t realize that you could make close friends in such a short period of time. Or this late in life.
After dinner, when we were doing the dishes together, Richard told me that I had gotten the story wrong: “YOU asked ME for a call,” he told me. “I had no idea why we were getting on the phone, or what you wanted.”
“Wait, what? There’s no way…you know how introverted I am. Why would I have asked you for a call?”
We stared at each other for a minute before scrolling through our phones to look for receipts on the initial outreach. We couldn’t find any. We still have no idea how we ended up on the phone. I think it was divine intervention. A spirit date.
I offer this anecdote only because A. It’s never too late to make best friends, and B. Pay attention to the ways the universe plays matchmaker, romantic and otherwise. Say okay to phone dates, coffee dates, and real dates. If a relationship feels energetically important—or like it keeps glancing against your orbit—it's probably essential to your growth. I often think of a friend named M, who met her husband the month she made a deal with herself to say yes to every invitation for 30 straight days.
I’ll tell you more about Richard and his genius in the coming months—I concussed myself last week (more on that below) and this is the most I can offer today—but please check out the incredible world he’s created at Flamingo Estate. I use all his bath and body products, write to the flicker of his candles, and his spicy dried Harry’s Berries are the best thing I’ve ever tasted.