Vindauga

I’ve been thinking about this recently, wondering if it has an signifigance or if it is just an happy accident.I have two separate friends in Greece right now. These two have never met each other and I have never mentioned them to each other. One is a friend from high school and the other a friend from grad school. I was think how strange it would be if they met, which led me to realize, as strange as that might be, that I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised. Why?

Years ago I was flying home and was in Charlotte airport. I had some time to kill, so I got an ice cream. While walking with the ice cream cone I ran into Buddy. I had taught Buddy at cotillion and his sister and I ran in the same circles. I knew him well enough to recognize him in a crowded airport. This chance encounter was strange but perfectly explainable; I was heading back to Miami and so was he. Not really so strange.

Not too long ago I was in San Francisco visiting a friend. I was doing lots of the normal tourist stuff, running around see sights. One day I visited SFMOMA and turning a corner on the second floor I came across Audrey looking at a Lichstenstien. Audrey was a friend of my sister’s from Miami who had not 3 weeks before moved to SF. Another strange and happy accident. Perhaps not too strange considering the circumstances but oddly out of the ordinarly none the less.

A couple of years ago I was visiting my father in Big Sky, a ski town. One evening after a day on the slopes I was taking advantage of the hot tub where my dad lived when a bunch of young guys from Alabama came in. After talking to them for a little while it turned out that they attended school where Wah’s dad happened to be teaching, and that they were his students.

While still in college (undergrad) I co-opped at IBM. One Friday afternoon some of my coworkers deciding they were going to drive to West Virginia to go skiing and invited me. We drove all night after leaving late and arrived just as the slopes opened. Around noon I was walking out of the lodge when a big fella walked in and eye balled me. Our paths were going to cross and I was a little concerned. But as he got next to me he laughed and said “Hey Hud.” It was one of my oldest and best friends, Atlee. The goofball had grown a beard. He and some friends had driven from Ohio to come skiing on the same mountain.

These are just the ones I can remember, I know there are more. These are all happy accidents, neat events that taken individually are amazing. To come across a person that you know thousands of miles from here you know them is by itself impressive but to have your timing so attuned that you don’t miss each other is astounding. Imagine all the people you know that you miss by mere minutes.

Now, I know that these events can be explained by pointing out that certain kinds of people share similar concerns and have a tendancy to share similar behavior patterns. Basically, people travel in circles and those circles are likely to intersect. It makes sense but it still seems strange. If this is true, why don’t more people have these kinds of experiences. I mean, they happen to me enough that I am not flabbergasted when it happens again.

I think of histories, like those told by James Burke, and wonder about the imortance of these seemingly random meetings. These are the kinds of chance events that help create what Heidegger might call a world historical individual. If these kinds of meetings are so uncommon, so uncommon that most folks never have them, don’t I have some obligation considering my tendancy to have them? A Kantian style duty to fulfill the potential associated with these occurances.

Seriously, I am not bragging. I didn’t write all this just to say “look at me, I’m cool.” I’ve just come to realize that among the various ways we can be privileged, I am priveleged in this manner and I am not sure what to make of it.