I have some happenstance friends—people I encounter randomly and often. We run into each other at restaurants, airports, and even in other cities. The beauty of these friendships is that we never know when we’ll cross paths, so our conversations are never rehearsed, never boring, and can be filled with the magic of the unexpected. Often it seems we have messages for each other.photo

Yesterday I stopped for dinner before going to a meeting. I placed my order and sat down to wait, and I had an odd phrase repeating itself in my head. “The writing remains, the writing remains.” (Cryptic right? Welcome to my head.) But I think it’s from a program I’d watched recently where archeologists were astounded by some written records they’d found.

I stopped thinking about the phrase when I heard a familiar voice talking to the hostess behind me. I turned to see my friend Taryn, who was looking to sit at the bar for a cup of soup. I hadn’t seen her in months and figured she was out of town. We struck up a conversation, and of course we included everyone else who was sitting around us–because eating dinner at the bar rather than at a table produces organic and all-encompassing conversations.

When Taryn finished her soup and was getting up to leave, she suddenly said, “Life isn’t about what you take with you. It’s about what you leave behind. So make a good path.”

There was the connection. “I can’t believe you just said that. Thank you!” I told her. As she left, I thought about what we leave behind, how my writing remains, and about the magic of happenstance.

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