What if?

Tonight I would like everyone to take a moment and reflect on your lives and the people around you. I would like you to think of one person who has had a great influence on your life, and especially someone that you have a great connection with.

Now, really try to imagine that you never met this person. Think hard on the circumstances of your meeting and the people involved, and imagine that you’ve never met. Imagine your life with having never met the force that has changed you, for good or bad, and where you would be today.

Think upon the great chain of circumstances that brought you to where you are. If you never met “A” who brought you to meet “B” who introduced you to “C”, who you forgot until you met “D”, who, by coincidence, knew “B” and then later showed you “E”.

If you never met “A” to begin with, would you have eventually met “C” anyway? What is the end result of our connections? Do we end up with the person we are supposed to be with through pure random meetings? Or do we end up with A + B +C?

What if “B” never reacted the way “B” was supposed to react, and you were introduced, randomly, to “D” instead of “E”. Would the resulting equations change your life?

Imagine you live in a city and you decide to move for one reason or another. All of the equations that were available for that life have now changed, but a thousand more have now appeared. You get on a plane fully planning to begin a new life in a new city, and then you meet a perfect stranger on the plane who talks about where they are from and you fall in love with the idea of living in their city. You have just created a new life, even if you don’t live it.

You walk down a street and someone stops you and asks for directions. You are not quite sure, but you tell them that you think they have to take a left and then a right; what if you had told them to take a right then a left and they got in an accident that put them in the hospital? What if by telling them to turn right they witness a crime and stop to report it, and save someone’s life? What if, in the end, you gave them the right directions?

How random is life? How planned is life? For each and every decision we make, we create possibilities; we create new lives. Sometimes while going to work by metro, I start running when I hear it coming, and then I stop myself. I stop myself and ask: if I miss this train, and take the next one, how is my life altered? Is there someone on the first train I was not supposed to meet, or was there someone I will meet when the time is right? Will I see something on the second train that I would have missed on the first; or because having thought of both possibilities, did I just create two new lines each one as real as the other?

Standing on a street corner I decide to cross to the left and am hit by a car. Standing on a street corner I decide to cross to the right and witness someone being hit by a car to the left. Standing on a street corner, I cross and arrive safely at my destination.

So, back to the beginning. Think of the person who has had the most influence on your life, and imagine you never met them. Can you picture where you would be? Can you picture your life?