Perhaps I’ve been reading too much Plato

First of all: Yes, I’m still alive. I survived the (whatever-it-was) infection and, even more impressive, the antibiotics treatment. I swear I’m still feeling groggy and a little nauseous from taking those pills. Other than that, I’m fine.

Now to what I want to discuss in this blog entry – I have some pretty far out notions about the way things happen in life, and let me just warn you now, that if you have a restricted imagination, you might as well stop reading here.

For those of you who are as open-minded as me, I would like to invite you on a short journey through my beliefs, paying particular attention to fate. I strongly believe that things happen for a reason, and that some things are simply inevitable. They are just meant to happen. Such was the case with me ending up in New Zealand. There was definitely a force beyond my control that led me to this marvellous country. Despite all the things I thought about prior to leaving, about how scary it would be; how difficult to be financially independent in another country, on a different continent, on the other side of the world; how I would miss people and the familiarity of Norway, and so on - there was nothing that could hold me back. And you know, it was only ever NZ I had my mind set on. Nowhere else. After my first stay in NZ my life had changed for good, there is no denying that. I had turned onto a new path, one that would see me return to Aotearoa 18 months later, and after I’ve been here for another 8 months I have not regretted coming back once.

What made me think about fate today was a funny episode that took place when I went to the supermarket this afternoon. For the first time in about a month I went to Pak’n’Save, which lies in a suburb of Wellington called Kilbirnie. To get there I have to catch the bus, which takes almost half an hour; that’s why I don’t go there very often (only when I have lots to buy, because it’s the cheapest place).

So I’m at Pak’n’Save, just strolling down between the aisles, when all of a sudden this guy I’m walking towards looks up from his trolley and catches my eye - so I smile at him, and he smiles back at me, and then he says ‘Oh, hi! How are you!’ Completely taken by surprise by this friendliness, I manage to say ‘I’m good, thanks, how are you..?’ He then realises that I actually don’t know who he is, and lets me know that we met last Saturday when we were both out on town, and I remember (after all, I was completely sober that night, whereas he was, as he told me today, ‘absolutely trolleyed’). He was really nice, though, and gave me his number and all. When I met him at the supermarket he apologised for the way he behaved last weekend, but really he was one of the few decent (drunk) guys I’ve talked to out on town on a Saturday night. So we chatted for a bit, and then we kept walking in different directions (although when I turned into the next aisle he was walking down it in the opposite direction, so we had to pass each other again. Awkward.).

Anyway, the point is that I have this (undesirable?) ability to read way too much into these sorts of incidents. Chance meetings, you know. Why do they happen? Has fate got something more in store for us? I realised just the other week that I believe that if something is meant to happen between two people who (may or may not) like each other, then fate will make sure that they meet, to make them realise what they want. The funny thing is that I was kind and gave this guy my number last Saturday as well, because he suggested having a coffee one day, and I (almost) never pass up on an offer of coffee, but nearly a week later I still hadn’t heard from him. And then I just randomly run into him at a supermarket I almost never go to, and he remembers me.

What made this whole event that much more intriguing is the fact that it’s the second time something like this (a chance meeting) has happened to me in two weeks. A fortnight ago I was out on town to watch a rugby match and a football game, and hoping to meet someone (not anyone, someone as in a specific person) afterwards. That person kind of got stuck somewhere on the way, so after a lot of waiting I joined a group of people at a pub, and decided to go with them when they went to another place. Guess who I just happened to run into on the way, in the middle of a crowded sidewalk? You got it, the person I’d been waiting for all night. You need to be able to imagine the overpopulated streets of Wellington on a Saturday night, especially after two wins by NZ sports teams on the very same night, to be able to fully appreciate the awesomeness of running into the one person you wanted to see, but had given up on. It’s true what they say; as soon as you stop looking for what you want, it finds you.

So if I had any participating readers, I guess this is where I would ask for your advice and comments and thoughts, but seeing as I don’t, I’ll restrain myself from doing that. Instead, I will apologise for the lack of introducing other beliefs I hold about how and why things happen, as it’s getting really late and I haven’t actually thought about anything else to write about than fate, so I’ll leave that for another time and place.

Maybe I’ll read a bit more of Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ (that’s where the original account of the legend of Atlantis comes from, for those uneducated souls out there who didn’t already know that) before I go to sleep (that’s bound to put me to sleep straight away). Actually, I quite enjoy it. It’s ironic, isn’t it, how I despise my philosophy course but read Plato for fun.

 

“Let us stay up all night and watch the stars fall down around us;

as the world breaks we shall dance in the golden showers, invincible.”