Blinking Dots

Hidden Treasures

After lunch with a friend yesterday near Piazza Navona, I stopped to look at a menu of a restaurant that was recommended to me and saw someone I used to work with seven or eight years ago.  I didn't know him well and really didn't want to have the small talk conversation so I just kept walking by.  However, I couldn't believe how random it was.  In this huge foreign city with thousands and thousands of visitors each day, what are the odds of me seeing someone I once knew in California when in the same city it's so difficult to find a place or someone you are actually looking for.  

Earlier that same day I was walking by Piazza Colonna, which has been the seat of the Italian government since 1961 - kind of like Italy’s White House, but definitely not as busy or symbolic as ours, I saw a fantastically dressed woman with gorgeous gold sandals walking into a hotel.  I remember thinking to myself that she must be the wife of someone important if not very important herself.  That afternoon, on the other side of the city, I walked out of a cafe to see the same shoes on that very same woman navigating the cobblestone in front of me.

As I kept wandering the tiny, curving streets of this ancient city with hidden treasures around every corner, I imagined a bird's eye view of the area and pictured all of us people with tracking devices on each of us and each represented by a little blinking dot.  I sat down on the bench overlooking the Tiber to rest my feet and remembered thinking about this concept when I first met Whitney.  Our paths had some so close to crossing so many times or probably had passed a few times.  But for whatever reason, our eyes didn't end up meeting until that particular night, at that particular location, sitting in those particular seats facing each other on a night where neither of us were necessarily looking.  I'm forever thankful for the fact that our blinking tracking dots were in sync that evening.

As I walk around the city I wonder which blinking dots are crossing paths with future friends or future loves...

Via www.tellussomethinggood.com