People are always coming in to and going out of our lives. From the moment we are born, our paths cross with others. It is difficult to imagine just how many people we have met in our lifetime, how many people for whom we have a memory. It is likely an undefinable number and probably a very surprising one if we ever attempted to calculate it (just start by multiplying the average school class, twenty-five, by twelve!).
For some people, our paths cross only fleetingly; we may never know their name, or hear their voice, only experiencing a transient moment in time when we are briefly aware of their existence on this earth.
For others, from the very the moment we meet, we are impacted; our paths don't just cross, our souls collide. We feel at once "in simpatico"; we understand each other, our hearts and minds speaking the same language. It is as if we were once branches on the same tree; a tree that gave us a way of being, of seeing, of sensing the world.
It is these people, no matter how long they physically remain in our lives, who leave a lasting trace that interweaves itself throughout our personal history, gently sailing alongside us, carried by the winds of coincidence and circumstance. We are transformed in some way through meeting such people; we are no longer what we were, but somehow we are extended beyond ourselves. Extended from who we were into the person we have the potential to be.
When we meet such people, we often experience a sense of 'coincidence', and we are tempted to dismiss what we experience as merely happenstance, having little or no significance or meaning. I was once given an alternative interpretation; that we 'wish certain people into our lives'. I like this alternative. It means that there is a part of me that knows just what I need, and seeks this out. My sixth sense. My soul sense. And it's my soul that carries these special memories of paths crossed in my life.
*Dedicated to a particularly memorable soul*
