I've always heard that gymnastics is all about control—your body, your breath, your head. Every move has to be on purpose. Every landing has to be perfect. No accidents allowed. I was good at that. Honestly, I was better than good. At seventeen, I already had three regional titles under my belt and was hyper-focused on nationals. My whole world fit inside a gym, and I liked it that way.
So it was weird that everything started falling apart because of a birthmark.
A few weeks ago, I went with my team to a big meet in the city. It was the usual stuff: long bus rides, freezing arena floors, and that smell of chalk and sweat that stays in your hair for days. But in the locker room before the floor exercise, a few gymnasts from an Asian delegation noticed the mark on my left forearm. They crowded around me like I was some kind of museum exhibit, whispering to each other in a language I didn't know.
One of them, a girl around my age with really good English, finally spoke up.
"That mark," she said, pointing but not touching. "We've seen that in books. It's the golden flower. For those of us who follow the Tao, it means something very specific."
I looked down at the spot I'd hated my entire life—a starburst shape, sort of a golden-bronze color, like someone had pressed a heated seal into my skin when I was born. My mom always told me it was just a birthmark. My teammates called it "the weird sun thing." I'd spent years hiding it under sweatbands.
"What's it supposed to mean?" I asked. I was mostly just trying to be polite.
The girl looked at her friends before answering. "It means you can enter other lives."
I laughed. I wasn't trying to be mean, but I couldn't help it.
The competition ended, and our team took second place. I should've just moved on. I should've gone home, iced my ankle, and got back to practice. But what she said stuck in my head like a song you can't stop humming. You can enter other lives. That night, laying in my hotel bed, I pulled out my phone and started searching.
What I found was actually pretty interesting.
In Taoism, reincarnation isn't really about being rewarded or punished like people usually think. It's more about... continuity. The Tao is like this big current that runs through everything, and since nothing is ever truly separate from that flow, nothing ever really dies. Everything just changes shape and keeps moving. If you live a good life—being kind, showing restraint, helping people—you're moving in sync with that current. And that harmony follows you into whatever comes next.
The more I scrolled, the more I saw that same symbol: the golden flower. It was everywhere—in old diagrams, meditation guides, and the edges of ancient manuscripts. There's even a famous text called The Secret of the Golden Flower. It describes the symbol as a sign of "spiritual awakening," the moment when your inner light starts to move freely. Some people believed it was tied to the idea of moving between lives—not just being reborn, but actually being aware of the jump. Like you were picked for it.
I sat there staring at my arm for a long time.
A few days later, I found out there was a Taoist temple about forty minutes away. I wasn't even sure why I cared. I told myself I was just curious, or that it'd be a cool story to tell the girls at the gym.
But two Saturdays later, I found myself standing in front of the temple, my gym bag still hanging off my shoulder from morning practice.
The building was smaller than I thought it'd be—just a plain little place squeezed between a laundromat and a print shop. You'd miss it if you weren't looking for it. But when I stepped inside, it felt huge. The air was cool and smelled like sweet incense. The walls were covered in stuff I recognized from my late-night reading: yin and yang symbols carved into wood and painted on silk. Underneath them were rows of neat calligraphy.
I stopped at the first one and read it twice.
Yin is darkness, stillness, the energy of the Earth and Moon, and the feminine. Yang is light, activity, strength, and the masculine.
And the second:
Yin and yang transform into the Five Elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.