How funny it is that every decision we make affects someone else’s life more than ours. The paths we cross may not lead us to proverbial paradise, but we may leave footprints altogether on accident in the right places for others to follow. All the people who have touched my life, despite not wanting to, have changed it for better or worse. I sit here with the balcony door open and the post-midnight October breeze lurking about the room, dancing with the curtain on its way inside, thinking about how my life would not have been the same unless strangers nudged me like claws in a pinball machine—their effect wholly random and, in most cases, unexpected. Do others acknowledge this, too? I would not know, but I would want to believe they did. We cannot all think of the same things at all times, but often, it is not too far from what we all think.
It baffles me sometimes how similar the world and the people in it are. People will always make cheese and bread—no matter what culture or geography they come from. They will also have some way to bring caffeine into their bodies. They will also, almost always, find a way to be kind and forgiving. People will dance and sing, and the good ones will believe they are not any good, and the bad ones will be convinced they are maestros. This is true through all of time and equally true in any corner of the world. There will always be those who help others reluctantly, and there will always be those who do not deserve it but will receive it anyway. There are many such similarities, and listing them would, firstly, be an extremely arduous undertaking and, secondly, absolutely unnecessary because, by now, you have already come up with a few examples of your own. There will always be this, too. There will be people who talk to each other across time and space.
They will be the writers and the readers. I sit here in a chilly room and decide to write these words. You do not know this, but it pokes your life into taking a turn for a minute or a decade. I will never know what it is, and you will never be able to tell me.
What we both know, though, is that people affect people. And this will remain true regardless of anything we do.