The Ripple Effect

When you've lived, well, as long as I have you can start to see how seemingly small events changed your life. I started to look at how these little ripples had their effect on my life.

In 4th grade we moved roughly about 15 blocks. Those 15 blocks put me in a new neighborhood. Two years later B moved to the neighborhood and we became best buds in junior high school. If neither of us had moved we wouldn't have become friends and then gone to camp together and joined the youth movement attached to the camp. If we hadn't gone to said camp we wouldn't have been sent by the movement to a year abroad studying after high school. Then I would never have met my husband C who was also on the program. We met when he asked me for a light at the airport in Paris because at the time I was smoking. So while I agree with the surgeon general I am glad I was a defiant youth who was smart enough to quit as an adult.

So had we both not gone on this program we never would have met and C would never have come with me to camp that summer which means he never would have met M and become his best friend. This is important because even though C and I parted ways shortly after that summer, six years later I came back to NYC for a visit and C was there too because M was getting married. Are you keeping up? After six years apart I was face to face with C. Without all that came before it never would have happened that the flame was rekindled that I lit in Paris all those years ago.

Crazy, but everything that happens in your life matters!