Everything In This World Is So Unlikely…

And Yet, Here It Is. 

At least for a moment, until it becomes something else. Look around the space you are in right now. What are the odds that everything around you would be in this exact configuration at this particular moment in time? And yet, here it is. Every single thing that exists sits at the top of a giant pyramid of lucky breaks. 

My grandfather told me this story shortly before he died. His father, my great-grandfather, was a very quiet man. My grandfather hardly ever heard him speak. And yet he had a way of letting it be known what he was thinking and how he was feeling. One night when my grandfather was a young man, he brought a young lady home to meet his parents. I guess at some point in the evening he looked over at his father as if to say, Well, what do you think? His father just gave him a look with a very slight disapproving shake of the head and he knew that this girl was not for him. Shortly afterwards, he brought my grandmother home to meet his parents and this time his father gave him a slight, almost imperceptible nod that said, This is the one.

If it wasn’t for that little nod, I would not exist. And yet, here I am.