Really, life? Really?

I just learned yesterday that a former student of mine passed away. This follows the recent news that the daughter of a childhood friend also passed away this week… 21 and 5 years old. How is this OK? Answer: It’s not. I’m trying not to think about that “bad luck comes in 3s” expression. I guess from every experience, every beautiful or harsh reality, the important thing is to glean some sort of lesson from it. As my friend whose daughter died said to me, it’s a reminder that you should live your life the way you want to. Sounds cliché, I guess, but it’s true. You never know what’s gonna happen in life, good or bad, so why not take chances? Dream a little dream. And try to make that dream a reality. Maybe we do actually get more than one life, but that’s not really an excuse to take the path of least resistance in any one of them. If you subscribe to the philosophy of reincarnation at all, to that idea of birth and rebirth, it’s about learning, perfecting in a way… but I don’t think that “perfection” actually exists. Maybe we need to find perfection in imperfection. Works for me. Who isn’t flawed? What situation isn’t flawed? I think maybe the key is how you accept or work with that imperfection.

Since my recent departure from Facebook, I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship and connection. With every passing year I feel like I understand more and more how important it is to surround yourself with people who lift you up, and try to limit or eliminate the time you spend with people who bring you down. It’s funny how you can spend oodles of time with someone and still feel completely disconnected from them, as if life has just thrown you together against your will, whereas you can spend very little time with others and yet feel a genuine connection. What is that? Is it a past life thing? I will never know. I only know that's it's pretty cool when it happens.

I have no new photos, sadly. An upcoming trip to the Big Apple should take of this, but for now, an older photo. The thought of this experience always makes me smile. It was my first day out in New Delhi and was an introduction to the way things were going to be for me in India, and to some extent other parts of Asia as well. When this huge group of Indian tourists noticed me taking pictures they all started waving wildly and smiling and laughing... and then I ended up in their family photos. It was so confusing, but so amusing at the same time. Random connections with strangers, gotta love it.