Nobody Knows Where This Is Going
Last Sunday we saw the sun. And since that’s rare in Vancouver from November to March, we obviously jumped on the occasion.
Because nothing was planned in advance, we simply decided to dust off the bikes and the child seat and go for a ride along the sea wall.
It was perfect. We got to recharge the batteries and spend time in family bliss. Then along with the early afternoon came the fog to cover everything, and we headed back home for Sunday’s holy communal nap.
Fast forward to the next morning. I put on my jacket to go out, and find one of my daughter’s mitts in there. I think nothing of it, just making a mental note that the other one is probably in the backpack we used on our bike ride.
End of the day. As I prepare to head home, I get a text from my wife. She asks if I could go pick up something she found on Craigslist and wanted to get. Just a small detour, off I go on my bike.
And where I would normally turn right to go home, I turn left.
Something catches my eye.
Sooo… Maybe the second mitt wasn’t in the backpack then?
I know, I know. Not that crazy. A mundane little event. Barely a pinch of salt to an uneventful Monday.
But don’t be so quick to dismiss it!
These little twists happen to all of us more or less regularly. They come in a wild range of importance, rarity and freakiness. From finding an object of little value the day after you unknowingly lost it, to bumping into the-one-that-got-away during a layover in an airport in a country you can’t place on the map. Yet they are all the same.
They are the glitches in the system that allow us a brief glimpse into the fabric of the universe.
I haven’t done my research. But I’m fairly certain every religion has a way of describing this.
Serendipity, coincidence, fate, providence, what else. Pick what you will, but cherish it when it passes.
I put my daughter’s mitts in the pocket of my jacket just as we were turning around to get home on Sunday—she wanted to use the other pair she likes better. We had a 6 km ride ahead of us, and the wanderlusting mitten could have jumped off anywhere. But it did so somewhere along the small stretch of bike path I was to use the day after.
It could have rolled off into the bushes, have been picked up and tossed, or it could simply have stayed where it fell on the ground and I never would’ve noticed. But a fellow human placed it somewhere someone could find it easily.
It could have been any plain old Monday when I turn right instead of left.
And I could keep going from the perspective of the mitten! Can you imagine how many of all lost mitts, gloves or socks get to find their pair again? Not many at all is what I’m thinking!
Who knows what kind of ripple effects this lost and found may have over our life. My daughter’s life, my life, your life (you’re reading, aren’t you?).
Every once in a while we’re afforded the privilege to catch a snapshot of the orderly chaos around us. A fixed image of all the forces that are at work in the universe, every single nanosecond.
Today I was given one of those nanoseconds. It won’t help me predict what is to come. It won’t make me omniscient. But I’m still framing it and hanging it up on my wall, next to other previous snapshots.
And I can turn to my wall of glitches to remind myself to keep flowing through life. To trust the processes at work. To not swim against the current. To remember that there are no big answers to find.
To find solace, in infinity.
