a moment of zen (or just awake)
Before meeting friends for drinks (as we were heading to a film), I remembering saying out loud that I hope to be present for some good rich story in my friend’s lives.
We were going to watch Slumdog Millionaire, a film that has been on my list for months. It’s been playing literally three blocks from home at the Esquire since some time in November – long before the nominations and press attention. It’s a love story set in tragically too real opposition that’s destined for a good ending.
But we were having some wine before hand. As we were drinking our wine, I had the chance to hear another love story of my two friends, Katie and James, and how they met. I won’t go into details, but to say this: the choreography of their first night meeting was so precise that one slip and they wouldn’t have come together. It was the kind of story – ironically – they would die to write into a movie, and every girl would swoon over each time they see it. Their meeting is an outstanding story of chances taken and decisions made in just the right moments. You hear it with the sense that everything that happened before they met was setting up a moment to start a new chapter together.
As we oohed and ahhhed over the story, there was a metaphorical tap on my shoulder as a reminder that this is just the kind of thing I was hoping to be a part of; something that would go beyond the normal social banter, that would open remind us that there are deeper, richer parts in play in our lives. It was serendipity.
And this all before we even got to the movie theater to watch yet another wonderful love story that had quite a different background, but was quite amazing all the same.
It is a good thing to experience the depth of humanity in regular life that so many movies hope to portray in fantastical life on screen. For all my enjoyment of films, I am even more caught be the multifaceted, intricate beauty of the lives right before my eyes… if I’d just open them long enough to see and hear.