The flight attendant advised putting on our coats, and we descended a mobile staircase in the dark.

The cold struck me like a ton of bricks to the chest. On the frozen runway, we tread lightly to the airport shuttle.

Most people were silent, but the friend I’d made in aisle six was chatty and nervous for her connecting flight to London. “Going by myself,” she’d told me somewhere over the North Atlantic. “My birthday is coming, so I figured I’d do something special for myself this year. You’re travelling alone, too?”

I was. A string of unfortunate incidents had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. What began as a series of excruciating experiences became the catalyst for the leap of faith that propelled me to book the ticket and leave. If I’d been living wrong—at least in theory, which circumstances seemed to illustrate over and over—it only made sense to do something that felt right.

Which, at that point, meant crossing the number one thing off my bucket list: watching the northern lights in Nesjavellir, Iceland. It was something I’d wanted to do for years, but had put off while I waited for the right time to go and the right person to go with. Those kinds of circumstances never really seem to line up, anyway, unless we make a point to align them ourselves.

The right time is always whenever we deem it so.

Read the full article on Elephant Journal.