The Art of Flow — Lessons from the Streets of Indonesia

Organized chaos. Scooters, motorbikes, cars, trucks, vans, bicycles driving without concern for rules. The name of the game is flow. No laws. More like a school of fish. Everyone adapting to the ever-changing conditions, moving as if one organism. No one gets angry. Everyone bends, adjusts, shifts, morphs into a single energy. A single brain. Thinking, not merely for one’s self, but for the entire organism—the greater good.

In America, you cut someone off and get the middle finger, the angry horn, hate vibes.
Here there is only love. Smiles. Occasional beeps of the horn to say hello—I’m here.
Never the angry, blaring kind of horns like in New York City. These are friendly, short little beeps. Here I am, coming up behind you. Let’s all be safe.

Potholes are everywhere, ditches, half-finished construction projects. The school of vehicles morphs around them, bending together as if a single energy to avoid any obstacle. No sirens. No police cars. No accidents to be seen anywhere. Our driver swerves into oncoming traffic to pass a moped turning left. The oncoming traffic slows, shifts, bends. We pass by and the whole escapade corrects itself.

The two-lane road is more like six lanes, scooters weaving around cars with narrow margins. Girls in dresses, full makeup, zipping by, waving to friends in cafés. I can’t find the hate vibe so prevalent in the U.S. There is real community here.

Prayer offerings are everywhere. Little palm leaves filled with flower petals, colorful flowers, fragrant items. Incense burning in doorways. Paper-airplane kites flying high in the skies—dozens of them—signifying a connection, a bridge into the spiritual realm. There are shrines everywhere. Dragons. Trolls. Monkeys. Monsters. Goblins. Gothic architecture. Blackened bricks. And the smells—spices in the air, grilled meats, local warungs serving up traditional Balinese recipes out of carts and stands, literal holes in the wall.

Everything is a potential hazard. Lawsuits everywhere! But again, this is not the U.S. Drive, walk, live at your own risk. Use caution. This is planet Earth. There will be hazards.

And yet, beneath the chaos, there is harmony. An unspoken order. A collective awareness that keeps everything moving—not through regulation, but through cooperation. What looks like madness from the outside reveals itself, the longer you watch, as grace.

No one is fighting for dominance. The whole of society seems to breathe in unison. Every driver, every pedestrian, every child stepping into the street is part of one body—an organism in flow.

The Way Nature Moves

And maybe that’s what struck me most: this is exactly how nature moves.
Not with rules and laws and stop signs—but with instinct. Awareness. Mutual response.

The animals don’t argue over right-of-way.
The rivers don’t need permission to bend.
The wind doesn’t check the forecast before it changes direction.

Everything morphs, shifts, adjusts to the larger pattern.

The traffic in Indonesia isn’t just movement—it’s mimicry of the natural world.
A pulse. A rhythm. A living intelligence.

And maybe that’s why it feels so beautiful—because for once, humanity is moving with nature instead of against it.

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Next up: stories from the small fishing village of Ekas, where cliffs meet sea, monkeys roam the shoreline, and some of the most incredible waves on Earth roll in from the Indian Ocean.

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(photos from the streets of Bali and Lombok below)