Chapter 22 - Revolutionary Road
Coincidence Speaks
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Happy Friday friends!
Welcome to this week’s edition of Coincidence Speaks. Chapters are crafted so they can be read on a standalone basis. For the full experience head this way to start at the beginning!↩️
Onward to Chapter 22…
Chapter 22
Revolutionary Road
“Ready to accept another job.”
Paul imagined that most people would laugh off the timing of such subjective coincidence and move on with their lives. But for him, this final indignation was too much to ignore.
And it was true.
In some part of him he was desperately resistant to acknowledge, something was off. Like that long-running Matrix undercurrent, there was some kind of essential misalignment with his career—but it made zero practical sense, especially since his job had always provided for his family and he’d finally reached a point where he had some free time and personal autonomy during the business day.
Indeed, the biggest fear in Paul wasn’t the judgment of coworkers or clients. It was fear of failing his family. Of letting his children down. Of letting Clara down.
With the added financial flexibility resulting from Paul’s previous job change, Clara had finally arrived at her own place of wonder, of self-exploration, and he didn’t know how to tell her what was going on without triggering waves of fear and uncertainty in her. The last time he’d tried to share the transformative change going on within him, she’d felt threatened to the point of questioning their future together.
Her words still echoed in his ears: “I’m not sure if I can go where you’re going.”
Undeterred, the interconnective flow state—or whatever the heck was going on—did not relent. Later that night, the ongoing feedback loops finally culminated in the random selection of a movie he’d never heard of before, and he and Clara watched Revolutionary Road, where Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winsley reprised their first role together ten years after Titanic.
At the outset of the movie, the couple makes a conscious decision to follow their dreams of escaping the trappings of modern society together, and Kate crafts a plan for Leo to walk away from his high-powered business career and to move to Paris, with the specific intent to give him space to finally explore what he actually wants to do for the first time in his life—instead of what he’s supposed to do. They announce their plans publicly, and everyone in their social circle smirks behind their backs, presuming they’re either totally out of touch with reality at best, or certifiably insane at worst.
“That’s what this is really about,” Paul realized, grateful for the movie to give him the right words. “I just need space away from non-stop career responsibilities to figure out what I really want to do with my life.”
But as events unfold, Kate gets pregnant and Leo gets a promotion, and instead of following through on their adventure and leaving for a new life in Paris, he stays right where he is for security, for comfort, for status, for money—and (spoiler alert!) by the end of the movie he loses everything he cares about in tragedy, including his own wife and unborn child.
The timing of the message for Paul in this movie he’d stumbled across with Clara could not get any clearer. It was time to lay all of his cards on the table with her. To let her know what he felt like he was being drawn to do.
She had trusted him when he’d left for the Bank of Newcastle, after all—and it had unlocked a remarkable new way of life previously unfathomable to them both. Surely she would be supportive of this latest leap of faith.
So on his 37th birthday Paul finally mustered up enough courage at dinner to tell Clara what he’d been thinking about. He laughed nervously to himself at the name of the restaurant as they walked towards the entrance. Ascoltare—the Italian word for “listen.”
“Maybe it’s a good sign Clara will be open to what I have to say?” It had to be.
He tried to wait for the right moment to broach the topic as they ate and made small talk, but there was no right moment. Instead the tension inside built and built, to the point of bursting. Finally he could bear it no longer and just jumped in headfirst, heart in his throat, blurting it out.
“So… I’ve been thinking about something a lot, and I don’t really know how to say it. So I’ll just say it—I want to take a step back from my career.”
“What?” Clara froze, mouth open, fork suspended in midair on the way up for a bite of her favorite pasta.
Paul swallowed.
“I want to leave my job. I need to take some open-ended time for myself.”
Her fork clattered onto the plate below.
“What are you talking about? For how long?”
“I... I don’t know—it’s hard to say,” Paul stammered, finding it impossible to pin a deadline on something that wanted to be so open-ended by its very nature. “But I’ve been working for seventeen straight years and I’ve never even taken one break, unless you count RSD. I want to do what I want to do for once.”
“Well,” she collected herself. “What is it that you want to do?”
“That’s the thing! I don’t even know. That’s why I need some time—to figure that out.”
Clara stared at him.
“Now? Now is when you want to do this? With our giant new mortgage? I thought moving to this place was the adventure? I thought we were doing this together? I thought this is what we both wanted? How does this possibly make any sense, Paul?”
“I don’t know—I can’t explain it. It’s like the events of my life itself are directly guiding me somehow—I’m sure of it. I don’t know where it’s going or what it means for us—I… I just know it’s one of the only things that’s ever made any sense in this world.”
“Well, OK—help me understand. Give me some specific examples. How is life guiding you?”
“Well, it’s uh… really kind of crazy, but…”
Sadly, that was the moment Paul thought it might be a good idea to give all manner of highly specific examples describing how trees, car stereos, crows, license plates, and apparently even copy machines at his office were responding directly to his innermost heartfelt questions and spoken words.
And that was also the moment he may as well have grown multiple heads.
Clara gaped at him, eyes widening in surprise then narrowing in disbelief. Her husband was absolutely, unequivocally, off the reservation bat crap crazy. She was right back where they started with this nonsense—wondering when the drama with Paul would ever end.
“You’re going to just up and walk away from your career and your family responsibilities because of what?”
“Well, I mean no, not just those things, but it’s a feeling I’ve had for a long time and I’ve only really just become aware of it….” Paul faltered.
Evidently Paul had yet to fully absorb the lesson from the RSD internet message boards. In his yearning and excitement to explore what he truly desired out of life, he’d broached the subject with Clara with all the compassion and empathy of a bull in a china shop.
Instead of a joint exploration of a new life together that included her, he’d made everything about him. With an utter failure to establish any sort of connective bridge between where they were and where he wanted to be, to incorporate how she felt and what she wanted, Paul managed not only to completely ruin his own birthday dinner, but also the fragile sprouts of soulful exploration in his wife.
After a strained and stunted meal of Paul continuing to stumble all over himself trying to share and explain the many inexplicable coincidences, words falling flat, Clara finally sighed, exasperated, and exhaled, “Fine. Whatever. Whatever you want to do.”
As the sound of her words trailed off into bitter silence, he knew they weren’t genuine. Clara felt cold, distant, closed off, and angry. He could sense her deep resentment towards the situation he’d triggered, and an even deeper wound of feeling unseen and underappreciated.
“I know you’ll just do it anyway,” she muttered softly under her breath, just loud enough for Paul to hear.
Her words came with an unspoken condition—if you fail, so does our marriage.
And how could he blame her? In his eager excitement, he had pulled the rug of security right out from under her. Just when she was finally beginning to enjoy life on her own terms. Clara was shell shocked now, sealed off, shut down by this sudden betrayal, and nothing Paul could possibly say would assuage that now.
There he was, after all: the self-centered, impractical husband, suddenly saying he wanted to leave the security of a well-paying job that supported their whole family, without any kind of set landing area—without any real plan at all—and the best reason he could give was that he was somehow being guided by some foolish flow state that he couldn’t even articulate and only he could understand?!
This time Clara wouldn’t be coming with him. This time he would be on his own. The stage had been set.
How much are you willing to risk? his life seemed to ask once more.
Then all the feedback loops stopped, and everything paused, like a held breath.
END PART III
PART IV of Coincidence Speaks will post in the imminent future. Thanks for being here in interactive real time! Comments and feedback always welcome.
In gratitude,
E.T. Allen
“Then all the feedback loops stopped, and everything in his life paused, like a held breath.”
You’re doing it again. Leaving me standing there on the edge. I thought you agreed that Paul needs a ‘supportive nudge’. I have a feeling he will gamble and risk everything.
Maybe he misunderstood “Ascoltare”.
I firmly believe there will be a happy ending.
‘Something’s gotta give’.