The randomness of everything

There is a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow called  'Sliding Doors'.  It's about the fact that if just one small thing was different in your life, your entire life might take a different turn.  Last night's bomb in The German Bakery in Pune has caused me to think about this aspect of being alive.

There is a randomness to most of our lives. Most of us don't live our lives on purpose, but rather find ourselves where we are by accident.  How many of us in our younger days, envisioned our lives sitting in an office job we're not committed to or a partner or even family that we're not all that committed to?  I occasionally think of what my life might have been like if I hadn't met and married Ralph. 

Things happen because we are in the right place at a certain time - when I met Ralph I was 19 years old and on the last few days of travelling through Europe on my own.  I was in a youth hostel, pretty broke, and had to stretch my remaining money for three days more. Ralph was a 20 year old British student also on his last two days of travelling through Europe.  We met, we fell in love and we're still here.  What if I had stayed somewhere else, what if I had not turned in his direction and spoken to him?  Would we have met some other way?  Was it fate?  Accident? 

I sometimes think about how my life might have looked if we hadn't met that August night in  Amsterdam? I am fairly certain I would still be living in America.  I would not have had the breadth of experiences I have had - no going to India, having a guru, meeting this whole remarkable eclectic community of friends from all over the world and I don't know that I would be doing the work that I'm so involved with now.  My life would be poorer, not financially, but in terms of heart connections and openness to new experiences. Maybe things would not have been so predictable, but I base my predictions on the lives of the people I grew up with and can see now.  It might well have been fine, but what I have now is infinitely more exciting and interesting.

The people in the German Bakery last night in Pune were probably doing what Ralph and I did last time we were in India - having a coffee, some fruit salad, an omelette and chips.  They may have tried to avoid the woman begging who always seemed to be there when we were there, and just getting on with the business of relaxing in an informal hang out on a Saturday night in Pune.  My heart really goes out to the dead and injured whose lives were interrupted by chance.  It doesn't really matter who did this terrible thing.  What matters is that the world of war and conflict encompasses such things to the extent that it was only mentioned on page 27 of today's Times.  The killing of innocent people is not even a front page headline.  How tragically sad.

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the right place at the right time, is all so arbitrary.  I am so lucky that the planets moved in the direction they did for me when they did and generally the accidental happenings of my life have been positive. I have a super partner, wonderful friends, great kids, a lovely house and a life that I feel fortunate to be living.  I am so very aware of that this evening.