Thought for today...

Years ago in high school, when I knew how smart I was, that is, before I turned thirty and realized how smart I wasn’t, I read Scientific American religiously. For me, it was in equal parts an exercise in concentration and amazement that I understood any of it. Hopefully, Scientific American will forgive my simple interpretation of the strand theory and its application.

The strand theory suggests that gravity is something that is felt only as a result of infinitely small elastic strands that attach every object to each other, something like glue between your fingers. Translation in human terms is that we are all connected and the little coincidences of fate, or peculiarities of taste and character shared by strangers are no accident. They are the strand theory manifest.
For example, why would I be drawn to any particular area of this great country? I was born in the middle of it, lived all over it and really have no hometown to speak of. But at different times in my life, I have wound up visiting, exploring, working, beaching, and living in this part of Georgian Bay. I have always eagerly returned here, feeling at home under these skies. Shortly after I found work and a home here, I discovered that my great-grandmother was born here and that I was related to some of the locals. Whether by fate or coincidence, those that walk the sands that frame the bay and their strands pulled me home.

The only time I’ve witnessed the effects of a tug of these strands on someone else was when my mother was reunited with her distant cousin, Anne. Another child of Manitoba, she left Canada fifty some years ago to start her married life with a British officer. She and my mother were close, but time saw them fall into their own lives, their strands apparently severed. However, on a recent trip my mother made to London, they shared tea, and both came away feeling satisfied and happy, being full of cream scones and the emotion of belonging to each other as only family can.

There are many times when I know I am meant to talk with new or old friends as I find them within my strands reach exactly when I need to hear what they have to share. I feel the tug on their strands when they experience their successes or disappointments, as tangible as any bit of rubber that ever stung my fingers.