YO YO MA

I've learned never to arrive in a city expecting nothing.

Travel has a wonderful habit of rewarding expectation.

Not entitlement.

Expectation.

There's a difference.

Expectation whispers, I wonder what magic today has planned for me.

That simple thought has carried me around the world more times than I can count.

Sometimes the magic arrives as a person.

Sometimes as a place.

Sometimes as an unexpected conversation with a stranger.

And sometimes...it arrives as two tickets.

New York.

November.

My daughter and I stood outside Carnegie Hall staring at a sign that simply read:

YO-YO MA—SOLD OUT

I refused to believe it.

"There will be two tickets," I told my daughter.

She looked at the sign...then at me.

"There has to be."

I wasn't trying to convince her.

I was trying to convince myself.

As the queue shuffled forward, I listened to the same words being repeated over and over.

"I'm sorry..."

"Sold out."

"I'm sorry..."

"Sold out."

With every person turned away, I felt my own hope quietly slipping down to my shoes.

I first discovered Yo-Yo Ma years earlier while watching The West Wing with my son. Tuesday nights belonged to us. Nothing interrupted The West Wing. Not homework. Not phone calls. Not life.

In one unforgettable episode, Yo-Yo Ma performed Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 during a White House concert. The cello didn't simply accompany the scene. It became the scene.

Its deep, haunting notes wrapped themselves around every emotion unfolding on the screen.

I remember thinking then that if music could ever speak without words...this was what it would sound like.

From that moment, I wanted to hear him play live. I couldn't believe he was playing Carnegie Hall, when we were in town, just a stone's throw from our hotel.

As the ticket queue shortened, so did my confidence.

I found myself making quiet bargains with God.

Just two tickets...that's all I'm asking.

Just two.

When it was finally my turn, I stepped forward.

"Just two tickets please."

The woman behind the counter smiled sympathetically.

"I'm sorry..."

Then she stopped.

Her eyes shifted towards her computer screen.

A message had appeared.

She frowned.

Read it again.

Then looked up at me.

"They've just released on-stage seating."

She paused.

"Would that be okay?"

Would sitting on the stage of Carnegie Hall, close enough to hear Yo-Yo Ma breathe between phrases, be okay?

I don't remember answering. I simply handed over my credit card before the universe had a chance to change its mind.

That evening, Bach's Cello Suite No.1 filled Carnegie Hall. The notes seemed to rise from the timber beneath our feet before floating into the great domed ceiling above us.

There are concerts...and then there are moments that quietly become part of your life story.

This was one of mine.

Later that night I found myself thinking about another moment from The West Wing, when Leo McGarry tells Josh Lyman the story of a man trapped in a hole. As the story goes, a doctor walks past, then a priest.

Neither can help him.

Then a friend jumps into the hole beside him.

"Are you stupid?" the man asks.

"Now we're both down here."

His friend smiles.

"Yeah...but I've been down here before...and I know the way out."

I've always loved that scene. Perhaps because life keeps proving that the most extraordinary moments rarely arrive because everything goes according to plan. They arrive because we refuse to walk away when the sign says Sold Out.

Since New York, I've often wondered why those two seats appeared exactly when they did.

Had someone cancelled?

Was I simply lucky?

Or had stopping for coffee delayed us by exactly the right number of seconds for life to place us precisely where we were meant to stand?

I'll never know.

Travel has taught me that not every mystery needs solving.

Some are simply meant to be treasured.

Even now, whenever I hear Yo-Yo Ma play Bach, I'm transported back to Carnegie Hall.

To a November evening.

To a cello singing just metres away.

And to the quiet reminder that sometimes the most beautiful journeys begin when you are determined to succeed and you persist until you do.