There are people I've yet to meet who are waiting for my path to intersect with theirs, so they can complete their own journeys. I don't know who or where they are, but I know for certain that they are waiting.
I believe that every interaction is an act of fate in some way, that we're meant to interact with them, and it's our job to flesh that out and experience it to the fullest and learn the lessons we're meant to.
There's a deep underlying unpredictability to life that is thrilling. In China, my wife would say you go out to buy toilet paper, and you come back, and something interesting or revealing or funny happened on the way.
If there is no fate and our interactions depend on such a complex system of chance encounters, what potentially important connections do we fail to make? What life changing relationships or passionate and lasting love affairs are lost to chance?
We always loved to say 'If I'd had a Monday-morning class, I never would have met you'. Or 'If you'd been reading something else, none of this would have happened'. We didn't believe in fate, but we believed in serendipity. We felt very lucky.
You meet people, you part ways, sometimes you cross paths again. Mostly, you don't.
Life is a boundless privilege, and when you pay for your ticket, and get into the car, you have no guess what good company you shall find there.
And still I wander, seeking compensation in unforseen encounters and unexpected sights, in sunsets, storms and passing fancies.
The most important thing about quests, he decided, was not in finding what you went looking for, but in finding what you never could have imagined before you ventured forth.
