You leave the house at a specific time, you get dropped off at the MARTA commuter station at another specific time. You wave goodbye to your Mom, you walk yourself up to the platform to wait for the train. One train comes, you board, you sit, you wait. Fifteen minutes later another train pulls up on the opposite platform. You're told, via the loudspeaker, to move to that newly arrived train instead, so you do. Two minutes later the train departs the station and you are on your way, leaving suburban Atlanta, headed to the airport. Your headphones are tucked in your ears, you're listening to sad folksy music. You have a propensity to do this regardless but today, this weekend, generally over the last month or so you've been really sad about a lot of really terrible things. You are wallowing a bit, but then again often the only way past is through. And sometimes a sad song just feels like the right choice.
So you're listening to your sad songs and feeling a bit blue and missing a lot of people and animals that you love in this life; some of whom are still here on this planet with us and others that are sadly gone too soon, and you're thinking all of these thoughts while making your way to the airport. The train stops every few minutes or so, snaking its way into metro Atlanta. You watch people board, others depart. The man sitting next to you for a handful of stops chats with you briefly. Not wanting to seem aloof, you remove your headphones to speak with him. As you talk, you think about how we are all in need of a bit more human connection these days, given that the majority of us are buried in our phones all of the time.
Eventually the train arrives at its final destination, last stop, the airport. On top of everything else that's been swirling around your mind, your back has been absolutely killing you these last few days so you take your time maneuvering down the stairs into the airport - naturally the escalator is out of order - with your luggage. You make your way into the main hall of the world's busiest airport where people are arriving and departing, heading to baggage claim, waiting in line for security, struggling with luggage, etc, etc. Like any airport it is organized chaos with hundreds of people milling about. You begin to make your way toward the security line, in step with the herd of travelers, when you see someone a few steps ahead of you, walking in the opposite direction. "Huh," you think to yourself, "they look a lot like so and so." Then as you take another step you realize, "wait. that IS so and so."
There are moments in life where your physical body knows what to do before your mind catches up. This is one of those times. In a split second you move out of the flow of traffic and step into the path of this person - this person that you literally had just been thinking about five minutes earlier - and you wait for them to see you, to catch sight of someone in their periphery, to turn their heads away from the baggage claim numbers you know they're watching, and to catch their jaw-dropping moment of recognition.
Time speeds up and it slows down simultaneously and while on one hand you cannot believe this person is right here standing in front of you as if you'd conjured them from thin air, there is also another side of you that thinks, well of course they are.
In the busiest airport in the entire world, it does not make sense that this would happen. If I read it in a book I wouldn't believe it, if I saw it on film, I'd roll my eyes at the unlikely odds. Two people, who haven't talked or texted in many days, neither of whom has told the other there recent whereabouts or even that they're traveling at any point in the present or near future, shouldn't, in theory, be able to find themselves standing mere steps from one another. But then, we did. It happened.
The naysayers can talk about sheer coincidence, I'm sure some social psychologists could explain to me the law of social circles being smaller than we think, how the odds of running into someone you know is greater than we all realize, etc, etc. People can always find ways to talk themselves out of believing, to stress cold hard facts. I suppose I could tell myself this story a thousand different ways too if I wanted; I could spin the what-ifs and the imagine-thats until my heart's content. In the end though, there is this - there were a million tiny little things that had to happen that afternoon, that had to align as they did for my friend and I to run into one another. If any one thing - a different train, another assigned baggage claim, a delayed flight, even a walk down the same hall at the same time but looking to my left instead of my right - had occurred I imagine our path-crossing opportunity would have been missed entirely.
But the thing is? We didn't miss each other. We didn't take an earlier or a later train or catch a different flight or stop at the newsstand to grab a granola bar or any of the other hundred paths we could have taken that afternoon. We went where we went and we did what we did and we stood where we stood and we where were we where at exactly the right time.
Stars aligned. The universe stopped and said hello to me that afternoon, right when I'd been feeling so blue and mournful. It said hello and it reminded me that while it may not always seem like it, there is someone, some force, something greater than any of us that has a hand in what is unfolding. It reminded me to have hope.
Eventually the train arrives at its final destination, last stop, the airport. On top of everything else that's been swirling around your mind, your back has been absolutely killing you these last few days so you take your time maneuvering down the stairs into the airport - naturally the escalator is out of order - with your luggage. You make your way into the main hall of the world's busiest airport where people are arriving and departing, heading to baggage claim, waiting in line for security, struggling with luggage, etc, etc. Like any airport it is organized chaos with hundreds of people milling about. You begin to make your way toward the security line, in step with the herd of travelers, when you see someone a few steps ahead of you, walking in the opposite direction. "Huh," you think to yourself, "they look a lot like so and so." Then as you take another step you realize, "wait. that IS so and so."
There are moments in life where your physical body knows what to do before your mind catches up. This is one of those times. In a split second you move out of the flow of traffic and step into the path of this person - this person that you literally had just been thinking about five minutes earlier - and you wait for them to see you, to catch sight of someone in their periphery, to turn their heads away from the baggage claim numbers you know they're watching, and to catch their jaw-dropping moment of recognition.
Time speeds up and it slows down simultaneously and while on one hand you cannot believe this person is right here standing in front of you as if you'd conjured them from thin air, there is also another side of you that thinks, well of course they are.
******
In the busiest airport in the entire world, it does not make sense that this would happen. If I read it in a book I wouldn't believe it, if I saw it on film, I'd roll my eyes at the unlikely odds. Two people, who haven't talked or texted in many days, neither of whom has told the other there recent whereabouts or even that they're traveling at any point in the present or near future, shouldn't, in theory, be able to find themselves standing mere steps from one another. But then, we did. It happened.
The naysayers can talk about sheer coincidence, I'm sure some social psychologists could explain to me the law of social circles being smaller than we think, how the odds of running into someone you know is greater than we all realize, etc, etc. People can always find ways to talk themselves out of believing, to stress cold hard facts. I suppose I could tell myself this story a thousand different ways too if I wanted; I could spin the what-ifs and the imagine-thats until my heart's content. In the end though, there is this - there were a million tiny little things that had to happen that afternoon, that had to align as they did for my friend and I to run into one another. If any one thing - a different train, another assigned baggage claim, a delayed flight, even a walk down the same hall at the same time but looking to my left instead of my right - had occurred I imagine our path-crossing opportunity would have been missed entirely.
But the thing is? We didn't miss each other. We didn't take an earlier or a later train or catch a different flight or stop at the newsstand to grab a granola bar or any of the other hundred paths we could have taken that afternoon. We went where we went and we did what we did and we stood where we stood and we where were we where at exactly the right time.
Stars aligned. The universe stopped and said hello to me that afternoon, right when I'd been feeling so blue and mournful. It said hello and it reminded me that while it may not always seem like it, there is someone, some force, something greater than any of us that has a hand in what is unfolding. It reminded me to have hope.
******
1 comment:
Missing your posts...hope things are looking up.
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