Endless Color

“Love is a Game” by Adele is playing as we drive through Topanga Canyon. When she sings, “My heart speaks in puzzle and codes I’ve been trying my whole life to solve,” I finally decode a puzzle I’ve been circling for months: the idea that everything is now.

You hear this radical idea tossed around—that there’s no past, no future, no linear time—just one big, ever-expanding now. It’s meant to ground us in presence: all we have is now.

But until this moment in the car, now had been hard on me.

In Europe, now was beautiful. Now meant I didn’t have to think about the going-home part. Now was the best era of my life so far—each moment bouncing from one form of magic to the next. I was always exactly where I wanted to be.

Since landing in LA, that sensation had vanished. That feeling—of being needed right here, right now—was gone. And that’s hard, especially for someone who milks every moment and squeezes meaning out of every lemon.

Until today.

I met up with the same friend who came to Barcelona the week I moved out of my study abroad apartment and into a summer of living with Mr. International. She made that shift feel seamless, energizing, colorful—and now, somehow, she’s done it again.

She spent her first year of college abroad, so she sees me in this struggle: redefining home, trying to feel alive in America, wondering if maybe I’d lost the joy I found. She gave me space to feel it. And then she snapped me back into the magical realm.

We were getting ready for a dinner she’d invited me to on a whim. I asked who’d be joining—a rare question for me, since I usually go with the flow. But I asked. She started describing a new friend: joyful, hilarious, someone she’d met at a party.

As she spoke, I started picturing a very specific girl.

“Is she petite, brunette, with curly hair?” I asked.

She looked at me, confused. “Yes?”

I smiled. “I met her too. At a New Year’s Eve party. Right before I left for Barcelona.”

I show up to the restaurant—and of course, it’s her. She squeals with joy when she sees me. We sit next to each other, and three more magnetic girls join us. The table vibrates.

Then something surreal happens.

A Topanga local walks over—he knows two of my friends from work. As he chats with them, he locks eyes with me. And without hesitation, he says: “Welcome home.”

Everyone freezes. He doesn’t know me. The girls hadn’t told him I’d been away.

But those words land deep. I’d just been thinking about how to define home—and suddenly, I’m being recognized in it.

I couldn’t let it go. I walked over and asked him how he knew.

He said sometimes he says things he doesn’t understand. “That’s why we have to be conscious of what we say,” he told me.

He’s right. If I’m going to challenge the idea of home, I’d better be ready to receive its definition.

We all say our goodbyes and float home.

As soon as I pull into the driveway, I get a call: New Year’s party girl just realized—we were study buddies in elementary school.

I’d been sitting next to an old home for my heart, thinking I was making a new one.

For the first time since I’ve been back, I’m truly exactly where I need to be. In the now.

I found my magic again in a restaurant called Endless Color. And somehow, magic found me in it.

On the drive home, I found now—realizing we never really lose the past or the people from it.

It’s all still very much present, wherever you make the heart a home.