Cosmic Forces?

A connection with a lost friend who reached out after she’d suffered a catastrophic personal blow. A phone conversation with a state employee who casually informed me I had pot of gold I had no idea existed. An email exchange from another state employee hinting at possible employment that might send me on yet another teaching journey. An epiphany about a writing project that allowed me to see its end.

These four unexpected developments buoyed me. They energized me. They came from nowhere but of course had to come from somewhere. They were the meandering result of my previous wonderful moments with someone, decades-long hard work in the classroom, terrible mistake, and the death of a beloved relative.

Was this the work of benevolent cosmic forces? Was this my subconscious screaming at the ocean to make something happen to shake out my recent torpor? I don’t know, but something happened, something merged and cohered.

It all reminded me something I have been writing about in earnest the past five years: that face to face conversations and face to face relationships and face to face random encounters can achieve magic in ways unimaginable in the digital world. They require extraordinary, even dogged effort to pursue and maintain, and were largely denied to most of us during the Pandemic. I was fortunate to have few filter into my life during the isolation, none more memorable than one inside a driftwood fort with a soothsayer. I’ll never forget the persistence it took to make that encounter happen.

What ultimately will result with these four recent developments remains to be seen, but they did occur and I never saw them coming. I will keep putting it out there, the writing, the service, the kindness. I will keep walking, exploring, accepting invitations that in my previous life I would have ignored.