Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Just Driftwood

It's weird to think about how much little things can hugely affect your life. How much your decisions and the decisions of others can permanently change your life drastically. Take for example, me living here in this town called Nampa. Growing up, the thought of someday moving to Idaho would have seemed highly unlikely to say the least. But now, here I am. How did I get here? Well, through a series of many small events and decisions dating back to high school. I played basketball, and a guy named Simon Cook played basketball. Somehow, after knowing each other for a year, we finally became friends. High school ends, he goes to Bible college. Eventually, I follow him there even though back in high school I never even considered going there. At Bible college, I meet Caleb, who for some unknown reason, knowing absolutely nobody, leaves all his friends, family, and longtime lovely girlfriend behind to come here. Then, finally in the last few weeks of the semester, we become friends, and then we all travel to England together. There, Simon meets some girl and winds up married living in Texas with a kid. Caleb and I however just go back home. After being home for a while, Caleb tells me to move to Idaho. Looking for a change and some adventure, I go, and so through each one of these small little events and decisions, here I am now. What are the odds?
Does the story really start there though? Lets go back, Simon was from a family who traveled all over the country living in somewhere around 15 different cities before finishing high school. If he didn't end up at my school, I probably wouldn't have gone to Bible college. But he did, yet even still the mere fact that we became friends in our senior year is quite amazing, as we have little in common. Go back further, when I was in Kindergarten, an anonymous family friend paid the tuition for me to go to this school where I met Simon 12 years later. My parents couldn't pay it at the time. If forced to leave, perhaps I never would have gone back to that school, maybe, maybe not. Go back 10 years before that, my parents, the unlikeliest of couples of whom to this day I simply wonder how, are set up by friends who for some reason thought they might work. And yet, despite my dad seriously considering calling off the wedding all the way up to the day, are still married, accidentally producing me along the way. The odds anyone? Go back 50 years earlier on a train headed north. My grandpa and his friend headed to Alaska looking for work during the Great Depression. Legend has it the train was rather full, and the two of them both spotted a seat next to a rather fine looking young lady. What did they do? They flipped a coin for the seat. Who won? not my grandpa. Who took the seat anyway before the other guy got a chance to get there? my grandpa. That night he wrote in his journal, "Today I met a truly beautiful woman named Rosamond C. Werdell." A few years later, after constant writing back and forth, she became Mrs King. So today, I exist, or at least with the genes I have, because my grandpa happened to catch the right train on the right day and cheated on a coin flip. What are the odds? Even further back are when my ancestors made the very big decision to move to this country. I think that is far back enough though.
So all these little and big things have led to me existing, here, in Idaho. Who knows what the future holds and how this time here will affect my life. Who knows what decisions I have made have seriously affected others. So many different people you meet and get to know throughout life, and they all leave a little tiny imprint on you and in some small way help to form the person you become. I guess there is no real point to thinking about any of it, but it's just kind of fun and weird to think about. All these completely different events from so many different lives all leading up to this. If just one of them didn't happen, where would I be today instead? (that is if I were to be at all). Makes you think there must be a purpose to it all, as if its fate, or God. Maybe it is just a bunch of strange coincidences. After all, something has to happen, so why not this, but I prefer to think of it the other way, that there is some sort of meaning to it all. Which do you prefer?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

once again, rocking my world in a blog.
cheers mate.

i hope i made some good decisions today.

Heidi said...

I too, love reading what you write. You always make me see the world in a different way somehow. Thanks for that.