All Lives Intersect

So, I might not be posting as avidly as I normally do because of school. (Sidenote: avid is a vocabulary word this week. I am such a geek now). My 12th grade AP class is now reading Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which is a great book with awesome lessons in it for students about to graduate. They hold Socratic Seminars where they discuss the book themselves, which I love to watch and listen to, but today's was really good. I wanted to bring up some quotations and discussion topics. This is why I want to be a teacher.

"There are no random acts. We are all connected. You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind."

There is so much you can do with quotations like this, and those beneath this entry. I do believe in randomness and spontaneity, but I do think that everything happens for a reason. Every person we know is there for a reason. We will learn something from each person we meet and encounter--there are no random acts. Even if it's a small lesson, we can learn something from anyone and anything at anytime, especially when we're least expecting it.

"Fairness does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young."

"The human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

"Scenery without solace is meaningless."

I love reading books where you can pause on certain passages, like the ones above, and just get that feeling of confirmation. Yeah, I'm not the only one out there who thinks or feels this. It's good to see in print.

All lives do intersect, somehow. I like to think how I effect others; sometimes it uplifts me if I have a crappy work day. Sometimes I think about my negative effects on others too, like scolding a kid at school, but I just do it to try to keep my sanity.

I think it would be cool if we let people in our lives know if they have changed us in a good way. Sometimes we can tell other people the story, besides that person, but doesn't that person who changed you deserve to know, even if we haven't spoken to the person in a very long while? It's easier said than done. Maybe I should whip out some paper and start writing encouraging words to people who helped me or changed me in the past, unknowingly. Even the small things, even the things they probably never even noticed. Wouldn't it make your day if you received an email like that from someone who you changed in a positive way?

I wish we were more open to kindness on a regular basis. It's just easier to not do it than do it, and that's what we opt for. I don't do it either--I preach and don't follow through. But, maybe this is my chance to talk myself into doing it.

Who would you write to and what would you say? Maybe I'll blog some of mine later, but not today.

Any reactions to the quotations, or anything else I rambled on about? Enlighten me!