Storms in Boston

I'm sitting in a hotel room. There's nothing special about this room...same bed as always, same shampoo, same phone, light fixtures, pillows. What is interesting, however, is how I got here. I lay in this bed because of a thunderstorm that struck Boston in April. This thunderstorm set into motion a chain of events that will forever change the course of my life. Even more interesting is that I was in Phoenix when this storm hit, almost 3000 miles away, oblivious that this was taking place....without any connection to anyone or anything in Boston.
It's a little overwhelming when I think about how the small descisions I make everyday can change everything, EVERYTHING. The phone call I choose not to answer, the person I say hello to in the coffee shop, a small deviation in my daily routine, will change everything. I love it...so powerful...so mysterious.
My latest addiction this summer is the television show LOST. I'm not much of a TV watcher, but I got the DVDs and began watching embarrasing amounts of this show as I was recovering from a surgery. There is an amazing episode in Season 3 that deals with this same issue...the infamous Desmond episode. If you haven't watched it, you should. It poses an interesting question: What if all of these small life descisions did actually get to be played out. My friend Dave Formisano also blogged about this:
"What if there were multiple timelines, all lying alongside each other, existing simultaneously. Think about your own life. What if you took this job instead of that one? What if you'd met a different girl, or moved somewhere else, or turned left instead of right? In my original theory, somewhere out there in the spaghetti strands of time, there's a universe where *exactly* each one of those things happened."
Its fun to think about. It makes me want to be more present..more aware. It makes me want to pay more attention to the people and events around me. It makes me want to weigh every one of life's descisions more carefully, because who knows who might cross my path and I might miss it...changing the course of my life.