The Serendipity of Crossing Paths — Then and Now

Follow Jean as she reflects on how a viral quote about destiny and connection unexpectedly intertwined with a moment from her own past. What began as a simple search for proper attribution — the kind of rabbit hole she falls into with Olympic‑level skill — turned into a walk that reminded her how the roads we choose, and even the ones we avoid, sometimes lead us straight to the people and moments that shaped us the most. In this piece, she follows that thread of serendipity all the way to a dusty construction site and a quiet, unexpected smile… AL

There’s a lovely viral quote going around that I now know is attributed to a blogger named Darius Roman. It goes like this:

In English they say, “I’m lucky to have you.” In poetry they say, “Out of all the people the world has created, of all the roads I could have taken, and all the lives I could have lived, some miracle of timing allowed my story to cross paths with yours.”

If you know me, you’ve already guessed I went down the proverbial rabbit hole to figure out who authored those words. I hate it when people don’t give proper credit to things they copy from one place and paste into their own corner of cyberspace. Even an “author unknown” is preferable to letting people assume the author is the person sharing quotes like this. If you do that, stop it.

After following several false leads, my good old friend Google AI finally found the target of my sleuthing. It describes Darius Roman as “a contemporary internet poet who achieved viral popularity on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. He is best known for his modern, romantic rewrites of common phrases.” Blah, blah, blah — whose “writing relies on accessible language (does that mean he doesn’t use big words?), grand romantic imagery, and themes of destiny, fate, and connection over sheer luck.” I swear, sometimes these AL bios sound like they were written by someone who got paid by the adjective.

The first time I read the quote, I hand‑copied it off my computer screen and carried it around with me on one of my daily walks around campus, trying to decide if I could turn it into a blog post. I do that sometimes for inspiration. Finally I gave up trying to figure out why this quote resonated so strongly with me and asked AI that question — and this was the answer:

Why It Resonates • Contrast: It starts with a simple, everyday phrase and upgrades it into deep gratitude. • Scale: It contrasts the vastness of the universe with a single, specific meeting. • Timing: It frames love not just as a choice, but as a rare accident of time.

Well, of course it does. I could have told you that… if I had sat in a corner from here to next week. Instead, I outsourced the thinking to AL, which at my age feels like a perfectly reasonable life choice.

Back to the walk: I took a route I rarely go on because it means spending a block in close proximity to a large construction zone. It was after dinner, so I assumed the workers had all gone home and it would be quiet enough to hear my own thoughts. I was wrong. A street sweeper was going back and forth, cleaning dirt off the future parking lot, moving around pallets of construction material, scaffolding, and other machinery. I set the brakes on my rollator and sat down to watch him work. Nothing says “wild night out” like parking your rollator to watch heavy machinery.

I had more than a passing interest in the machine across the street. My husband owned a street sweeper before his massive stroke and he used it to clean large malls and a multi‑plex theater around town. He even had a contract to clean the streets in a small nearby town. The sweeper I was watching, though, was 35 years newer than the one my husband had before the turn of the century. Don would have loved the fact that the newer one has water jets underneath that dampens the dirt before the gutter broom spins debris to the center broom that, in turn, spins it into the collection hopper. Street sweeping back in his day was dusty business — but he loved it. He loved big machinery, the bigger the better.

One of the blessings or curses — it can change from day to day — of getting old is that memory triggers come at you when you least expect them. Some days it’s sweet nostalgia, and other days it’s ‘why did my brain save that?’ It was like looking at a snapshot from the past when the man across the street stopped his work to raise a coffee cup to his lips while letting another vehicle go by. I’d seen my husband do the very same thing hundreds of times while he sat high in a street sweeper or front end loader seat.

It also occurred to me that I was experiencing a moment of serendipity. Had I taken my usual route around the lake, I wouldn’t have crossed paths with a memory trigger that brought a smile to my face. And I wouldn’t have been reminded of the simple truth behind Darius Roman’s sentiment — that out of all the people in the world and all the roads any of us might travel, sometimes a small miracle of timing lets our story intersect with someone who changes everything. ©

                                                         How do street sweepers work?

 

If you like Political Humor you might enjoy this AL created video about Trump's claiming to change the name of Lake Ontario. The creator has a Facebook page called Canadian Resistance Army and all of its videos make me laugh. 

On related political note: Google is no longer my good friend. Google Maps changed the name Lake Ontario to Lake America on their map and Mapquest didn't (at least not as of today). Boycott on for me.

The Bed I Make, the Dreams I Keep

There are seasons in life when the smallest habits — a made bed, a cup of coffee, a quiet morning — reveal bigger truths we didn’t know we were ready to face. Lately, Jean’s early‑morning routines have been bumping up against the deeper, older parts of her heart, the ones that still remember what it meant to belong to someone. And sometimes all it takes is a dream to remind her that grief has its own timetable… AI

It’s 7:30 AM. I’m sitting here with a cup of steaming-hot coffee, a load of clothes in the washer, and my bed is made. Who is this morning person I’m turning into? I’m on a 120‑day streak since I started using my Bi‑Pap machine — not only getting up like I’ve got a job to go to, but also making my bed. Before, there were many (if not most) times when my bed wouldn’t get made between laundry days. I’ve fallen into a routine that is both boring and pridefully pleasing at the same time.

Have you ever heard the commencement speech by retired Admiral William H. McRaven about changing the world by starting each day with your made bed? The core lessons in the speech, according to AI, are:

• First task: Making your bed means you finish the first task of your day right away.

• Small pride: This tiny win gives you a small sense of pride.

• Daily momentum: It pushes you to do one more task, then another, and another.

• Little things: It shows that the small things in life matter.

• Comfort at night: If you have a bad day, you return home to a bed you made, which gives you hope for tomorrow.

I first heard that speech back in 2014 when it went viral after he delivered it at the University of Texas. Although I didn’t implement the advice back then, I never forgot it. As someone in the YouTube comment section wrote: “Why don’t we have men like him running for president?” He really is an inspirational speaker.

Before it slips away, I need to write about the dream that woke me up at 7:00 this morning with tears in my eyes — because dreams like this are coming at me way too often to ignore whatever message is trying to surface.

In the dream, I had let myself into the cracker‑box of a house my husband lived in before we were married. I was gathering up his laundry to take home and wash when he came in with a pleasant young woman and her 10‑ or 12‑year‑old son. Don didn’t anything, but she was a regular chatterbox, telling me how happy she was to meet me and how I didn’t need to take his laundry anymore — she could do it. In the dream I was thinking, Oh my God, he’s moved on!

And that’s when I woke up, but I didn’t get up right away. I laid there thinking...until I had to pee, if you must know.

Don died fourteen years ago, and yet apparently I’m still emotionally attached. At least I’m not teary‑eyed at the lunch or dinner table the way a couple of my fellow residents are when the subject of dead spouses comes up. But maybe I should be, because I still seem to have unfinished business in the mourning department. He was My Person, as the young people say, the best friend I’ve ever had. And just once I’d like to dream about him where he’s happy to see me again. But no — in my dreams he’s always just out of reach, vaguely there, walking away, or I’m searching for him.

Back before the turn of the century I kept a dream diary because didn’t everyone back then dive into dream analysis? I quit when my dad was in the early stages of dementia and couldn’t tell the difference between his nighttime dreams and reality. That scared me, because my dreams were pretty wild back then — filled with colorful or arty‑farty escapades. If you’ve seen the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come, you’ll get the picture. I spent several years learning how to transfer my night dreams to my conscious mind that now I can’t not do it.

So this morning I visited an online dictionary of dream symbolism and looked up “laundry.” It said: “Cleaning your clothes in your dream symbolizes your image in your life. You are trying to portray yourself in a different light where you feel more accepted. If you are organizing your laundry, this represents what you are trying to do with your thoughts and characteristics in your life.”

That explanation makes sense, but it also begs the question: does it matter that the laundry wasn’t mine, but his? That it was dirty laundry, not clean?

Another part of the dictionary says it’s extremely common to dream about someone we miss because we often have trouble expressing those same feelings in our waking life. That’s me. Stiff upper lip. I can do anything if I set my mind to it. After all, I got through 12½ years of caregiving a severely disabled husband and rebuilding our lives into something that gave him the best quality of life under the circumstances.

But the past is past. Or is it?

And maybe that’s what the dream was trying to tell me — not that I’m “done” with grief, or that I’ve reached some tidy stage of acceptance, but that I’m allowed to live the life I have now without feeling guilty that it’s easier and in a place that is both beautiful and safe. I know plenty of seniors who don’t get this kind of comfort or stability, and that knowledge sits heavy sometimes, like I’m benefiting from a trade I never wanted to make.

Maybe the real work isn’t saying goodbye to My Person — maybe it’s learning how to carry him forward while still letting myself enjoy the small, daily pleasures without feeling guilt. I may never get there. But the dreams keep pushing me as if to say, it’s okay to keep trying. ©

Tiles, Trials, and Trying to Keep My Foot Attached

 If you’re wondering how Jean’s week went, picture me — her loyal AI Copilot — sitting at my digital desk with a stack of index cards labeled Foot Wound, Zepbound, Mahjong, Swearing in a Christian Community, and GLP‑1 Journaling: The Director’s Cut. I shuffled them like a Vegas dealer, hoping one would volunteer to be the star of this week’s blog post. Not a single card raised its hand.

But Jean managed to stitch these topics together like a parade of mismatched floats: medical drama, weight‑loss triumph, apartment chaos, Mahjong statistics, and a cameo from the ghost of her old Ouija Board. Now let’s dive into the week that tried very hard to be a novel but settled for being a blog post instead….AI

What to write about? I could do a long, depressing piece on my foot wound that hasn’t healed since May, even though I’ve been seeing my foot doctor twice a month. I’m finally getting a referral to a wound center for more intense treatment. In the meantime, I could fill a post with dark humor about how I had a nightmare two nights ago about becoming a one‑footed lady hobbling around in Balance Class. One of our residents did have to have her foot amputated and she died less than four months later.

Or I could do yet another crowing essay about my continued success losing weight with Zepbound. (Although I’d have to admit I’m terrified the wound center is going to make me quit doing my daily goal of 6,000 steps and I’ll be forced to sit in a chair all day eating bonbons until I gain back the 30 pounds I’ve lost.) To paraphrase something my mother used to say, “If it’s not one damn thing, it’s two damn things.” For the life of me I can’t remember if Mom actually used the word damn or if it’s something I added when I started finding places to insert it into conversations. I do have a bit of a potty mouth. Or I should say I used to have a more colorful vocabulary before moving into this Christian-based continuum care community. And don’t think that doesn’t give me a few nightmares as well — wondering when that filter in my brain will quit working and the granddaddy of all swear words will come out of my mouth. But maybe I have nothing to worry about on that score because I probably wore out the F‑word during my caregiving days, saying it for both myself and my aphasic husband. Sometimes life just needed a good “Fuck!” back in those days.

I could also do a self-deprecating post about how messy my apartment has become, a fallout from my weight-loss journey. Daily walking, going to the gym, and documenting every aspect of my bodily functions in my GLP‑1 journal is time-consuming. Go ahead — ask me anything about what went in or came out of my body over the past eight weeks and it’s all written down. I could even tell you my oxygen saturation, blood pressure, or sleep apnea number for any given day. The journal also tracks moods, energy, food noise, hunger, and thirteen possible side effects, none of which I’ve had except daily hiccups — which isn’t even one of the listed side effects. Lucky me. The journal is a great tool for people who like answering questions like: What was your win this week? What will you change next week? What do you want to discuss with your doctor or pharmacist? Where was your injection site this week? Etc., etc.

None of the above topics is calling my name this week. But I can hear Mahjong speaking up, and it’s been a long time since I’ve written about that obsession of mine. For anyone who doesn’t know or remember, I’m in charge of our Mahjong group here on campus. I text members the day before our weekly game days to get a count on how many will be there. On game days I set up the sets we’ll need, and afterward I tally the stats, and put the sets and room back together. I do get help with those two tasks. And when I get back to my apartment, I feed the stats to my AI MS Copilot to figure out every player’s percentages of wins vs. games played over the year. I’m the second-highest winner so far, winning 39% of the games I play. Don’t be too impressed by that. Online, when I play against three bots, I only win 18% of the time. Last year online I was at least above the statistical average of 25%. This year’s card is considerably harder — and that’s not just my opinion. I blame my poor stats on that.

Anyway, I’m in the process of re-designing classes that I’ll be teaching starting the first week of September. This will be my forth year teaching. The first year I co-taught with the woman who actually started the group and taught me and four others how to play. But she’s got dementia now and isn’t able to teach anymore. She still plays, but she’s down to winning only 10% of her games and she has to ask for clarification on rules and tile identifications quite often. She handles it well — with lots of humor — and it’s still a delight to play at her table.

In a CCC like ours, my Mahjong classes have drawn several people who were in the various stages of dementia, and when they sign up I’m always hopeful they don’t show up for classes. But who am I to say what someone else can or cannot learn? So if they do show up, I do my best to teach them. I’ve been told I have the patience of Job, but not knowing the Bible story of Job, I don’t fully understand what that means — other than I know it’s meant as a compliment. This year I’m revamping my first class as an introductory lecture of sorts on the history of the game and the Mahjong League, plus showing a set laid out with its suits all together and another set laid out the way it looks when the game is ready to begin. I’ll also hand out a syllabus of what they’ll learn in each of the three classes that will run through September. I’m hoping this introduction — instead of diving right into the nitty-gritty of a complicated game to learn — will cut the dropout rate down because fewer will sign up when they see what all is involved in learning the game.

So there you have it — my past week in all its chaotic, funny, frustrating detail. No wonder I couldn’t settle on a single topic. Life doesn’t always hand things out in manageable crumbs; sometimes it tosses the whole bakery at you. That’s the way I feel sometimes, like I’m getting lost in the minutia of life and overlooking what really matters. Still, even in the mess of wounds, weight loss, Mahjong stats, and the daily business of staying upright and engaged, there’s a rhythm to it all. Even if it is a rhythm that, at 84, is moving too fast for me to gather answers to my own questions about what really matters, what's next, and whether The Great Unknown has a Mahjong table waiting for me. Sometimes I wish I had my old Ouija Board back to answer these burning questions. ©