In my celebrity/pop culture obsessive life, yesterday was a huge day for me.

I had my first New York City celebrity sighting.

Since I’m still navigating my way uptown, downtown and all around NYC, I tend to get lost on street corners about 70 times a day. It’s not the kind of lost where I sit down on the curb, defeated and sticking with sweat, and surrender to calling an Uber (that only happens bi-monthly now, yay me!). My getting lost is the kind of lost where you’re stuck in an avalanche and don’t know which way is up; only up is street level from the subway station and the tumbling snow around you are the 8 million other daily lives that run circles around yours. In avalanches, direction gets obscured. I have heard that if you don’t know which way is up, you should spit. To find your way up in Soho, you simply follow the exit signs. Despite popular opinion, New York isn’t as dramatic as avalanches–not even the hipsters.

But I digress.

After a long day of work and planning an event surrounding the World Cup, I mustered up the energy to go to the gym, which lately, has been unlike me in my summertime slump. I decided to go straight from my office, which is something that I’d never done before. I got off the subway at Bleeker street and began to walk in the direction that I had thought was correct, not bothering to check my 30,000 different map apps. About five minutes in, I realized I was going the wrong way, just as my FitBit buzzed to let me know I had reached 10,000 steps. I sucked in my cheeks and fought off the thoughts of oncoming frustration that I knew were inevitable. Thoughts such as, “This is why I shouldn’t work out!” and “I have 10,000 steps, I’m already an overachiever! I should go get some red wine and a frozen pizza instead!” But I fought off the thoughts, and because of that, I’m now convinced everything happens for a reason.

One block from the gym it happened. I looked down to check the time because I wanted to begin my workout by six. It was 5:58 and I was still in my work clothes, so that wasn’t happening. If only I hadn’t gone the wrong way, I thought. Except if I had gone the right way, I never would’ve noticed him.

After looking up from my watch, I saw a man 10 feet in front of me, bent over, picking up after his scruffy mutt on the sidewalk. As it is second nature in New York City, I diverted my path of direction to give him room. That’s when Liev Schreiber stood up and looked at me, dog $h!t in hand.

He was wearing a hat and sunglasses, and immediately avoided eye contact and turned his back to me, seemingly trying to cease my recognition. I kept walking, thinking, “That looked like Leiv Schreiber, but there’s no way.” After ten paces, I turned around, just to make sure that I was in fact crazy. It was confirmed that I wasn’t.

I don’t even watch Ray Donovan, yet victory filled my veins like an afternoon caffeine fix. I googled Liev’s whereabouts, just to make sure he was in New York City and the possibility was valid. I immediately confirmed that he had just renovated a Manhattan apartment, and saw a picture from a People Magazine article I had read months ago, of his rescue dog from Hurricane Harvey; the same scruffy mutt I had just watched take a dump.

Nothing makes you feel small like living in New York City. I stand in line every morning, just to get up the stairs at Grand Central. In anywhere but Manhattan, a line to go up stairs would cause immediate riots from impatient North-easterners. Here, it’s simply routine that has already been programmed into me after only a month and a half of my internship. It’s also programmed into 8 million other people.

I’ve never been one to whole heartedly believe that everything happens for a reason. Bad things can happen sometimes with no explanation, some people don’t have soulmates. But then, out of 8 million people, it was me who saw Liev Schreiber with a handful of dog poop. It might as well have been Kanye West with a handful of gold. It’s meaningless instances such as this one that remind us, even in times of our most reasonable doubt, that nothing is random. The most unreasonable, smallest circumstances, can show us everything is on a track. A track to what, we’re not quite sure, but that’s because we are simply passengers. And on a track with 8 million other passengers, I saw Ray Donovan picking up dog poop.