I'm So Excited

I'm so excited about life.

Wait, what?

What are you talking about, Andrew?

I kind of had an epiphany today. It was linked to this picture:



Think about it! Your life is made up of an infinitely complex fabric of ever interweaving threads that stretch on for eternity or fray and end. It is a giant oak, ever growing upwards; every person you ever meet is like a leaf, constantly being replaced as people fade from your life and fall to the ground, while there are a few leaves that remain forever. In one city alone there is an infinite amount of cause and effect, going this way and that, speeding on to the future.

Just look at someone you don't know. They will think things you will never think, say things you will never say, and do things you will never do. When you pass by as an extra in the background, you are simply one tiny word in a story as endless and intricate as your own. Life is full of color and choices and experiences and loves and losses and triumphs, and everyone's life is infinitely different than your own.

Today this epiphany hit me because I was washing my hands in the bathroom and this random guy was too. I  don't know him, don't even know his name. He will probably never know that some random blogger mentioned him. We didn't say a word to each other. But he entered the story of my life and I entered his for just those few moments. He knows people I will never meet, feels things I will never feel, has seen things I will never see.

And this fabric of great immensity and beauty and wonder is being repeated around the world billions of times and most of us don't even stop to realize it. To me, it's fascinating. It makes me excited. It makes me want to live life to its full vibrancy. Like the picture says, life is elaborate. It twists this way and that, an endless road shaped by complex causality. We invest ourselves in people's lives as friends, as lovers, as family, and we're able to see much of their own life tapestry.

But that random man on the street, that woman drinking coffee in a small coffee shop, those friends wandering the mall and talking, adding their breath to the vast expanse of the human experience, they are the ones to wonder about. They are the ones to ponder and to help you realize that life is more than what we often realize.

And it's one heck of a beautiful thing.

I'm excited. I'm excited because today I think I realized life.