Miami is a truly dynamic place where literally anything can happen at any moment. For context, I spent the month of February encroaching on my parents’ vacation in Miami Beach. In my first week in the city I unwittingly participated in a stranger’s beach engagement proposal, looked on as a drunken bachelorette party crashed a couple’s baby gender reveal, and was privy to a fresh crime scene along an upscale Miami canal, featuring a dead body surrounded by the Miami PD. Whew! All that in week one! I don’t know why I was meant to experience these events which culminated in the full circle of life, but it left me wondering what could possibly be the meaning of it all. Though one can never truly be sure why things happen the way they do, I’ve come up with a couple of theories which try to make some sense of these funny, exciting, bizarre, and overall unusual events.
First thing’s first, you’ll need some details about each of the incidents in my expedited circle of life experience.
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Event One: The Engagement
My first morning after arriving in Miami, I decided to take a walk along the beach to get my bearings and soak up the sun after a long cold winter up North. About five minutes into my solo walk, I noticed a young couple heading towards me. I tried desperately to avoid them by looking away and attempting to indicate with my body language that I am antisocial and wanted to enjoy some peaceful alone time, but alas, they approached.
The man walked up to me and asked if I would take a video for them. Not knowing what they were planning, I obliged and the couple got into position. I began recording just as the young man dropped down on one knee and asked his partner to marry him. She said yes, he slipped the ring onto her finger, they smooched, and he told me I was all set to stop recording. What on earth?! The whole thing played out so smoothly that I thought it was staged. I was completely shocked (probably more shocked than she was), and immediately started crying, realizing it was real as the two embraced and the woman’s hand shook as she admired the ring. I asked them if that had really just happened when I handed back his iPhone and he said yes it did, barely acknowledging me, as the couple continued to bask in the glow of their spontaneous new engagement. I called out congratulations and continued on my way, completely in awe that on a random, otherwise mundane morning, I had unknowingly participated in a life changing moment for a couple of strangers.
Event Two: The Gender Reveal
The second event happened as I strolled along Ocean Drive, Miami’s iconic beachside road lined with outdoor bars and restaurants, loud music, and Art Deco-style hotels and buildings. I noticed a rowdy group of drunken women at a bachelorette party who were making their way down the strip. Their music blared from handheld speakers as they stumbled and danced down Ocean Drive, laughing and yelling and drinking from phallic-shaped cocktail glasses. My partner and I walked just steps behind them, laughing to ourselves about how much fun they seemed to be having.
Suddenly, one of the girls turned to her right and spotted a young couple standing on the nearby boardwalk holding an enormous black balloon dotted with silver question marks. Recognizing the balloon as a baby gender reveal, she called out to the couple “do you guys want us to help you celebrate?!”, drawing the attention of her fellow bachelorette party attendees. The shy couple didn’t know what to say as the group of women descended on them and their balloon. My partner and I couldn’t believe our eyes as a crowd began to grow around the couple and they somehow agreed to pop their balloon and reveal the gender of their baby alongside the bachelorette women and crowd of curious onlookers. They popped the balloon and blue confetti exploded into the sky to the tune of cheering and congratulations for the couple, who cried and embraced in a moment of sheer joy, excitement, and the purest form of happiness. The bachelorette women whooped and squealed, taking videos and selfies with the happy young couple as the onlookers continued about their business with smiles plastered to their faces. What a time to be alive in Miami!
Event Three: The Crime Scene
The final event in this saga is a bit more somber, and carries with it notes of dark intrigue. I was in an Uber headed back from South Beach, just minutes away from my parents’ apartment. We stopped at a traffic light and I noticed a commotion on the other side of the road along the canal. There, an unusually large number of police cars and ambulances were gathered beside the row of luxurious yachts and opulent mansions that dotted the canal. I strained my neck to see what all the excitement was about and lying on the ground was a body bag filled with someone recently deceased, which I assumed (I’ve seen enough Miami crime shows) was most likely a murder. Just then, the light turned and my Uber continued on, leaving me to wonder who and what I had just seen, and what had happened just blocks from where I was staying. That night I went online to try to find out more information but was unsuccessful, leaving the mystery of the body fresh in my mind.
My Conclusions
So, what to make of this unique string of occurrences happening all within days of each other? A spontaneous engagement, an unintentionally public gender reveal, and a mysterious dead body on the side of the road; what are the odds that I would encounter the key elements of the circle of life in a single week’s time? I thought about it.
Firstly, it’s important to note that I experienced these events out of order. First was the beach engagement, then the crime scene death, and lastly the gender reveal. The meaning behind the “circle of life” is said to represent life occurring as a cycle. This theorizes that nothing is truly ever lost, just recycled and reborn. The fact that I experienced the death at the crime scene and then shortly after, the baby gender reveal, could speak to the idea that with death brings new life, and as such the cycle begins again. Now, clearly one’s existence is composed of soooo much more than these few key moments, but birth, marriage and death are major events that are often defining stages in a person’s life. Though there are a million things that divide us as humans, whether by race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ideology, gender, or anything else, one thing is for sure: we are all born, we all live, and we all die.
In some ways, my experience in Miami highlighted this inevitable cycle through which we live. The way I encountered it was reminiscent of the way that we as humans experience it; spontaneously, with excitement, joy, and occasionally fear and uncertainty. I considered the importance of timing. Maybe it was important for me to experience these things when I did, in the midst of Covid, after a full year of things feeling off balance, out of place, random and uncertain. Perhaps this was a grounding reminder that there IS a plan, or at least a cycle, which happens with unwavering certainty. We are born, we live, and we die. The circumstances of any and all of these events can’t always be predicted and often happen in the ways we least expect, but what’s certain is that they will happen. No matter who you are, we’re all in this together.