New Year’s Eve is rapidly approaching as I write this blog for January, and I’ve been thinking about the tradition of reviewing the year in terms of its joys and sadnesses. I asked ChatGPT for its “opinion” of this tradition. I didn’t mention anything about older people, but here’s what it said. “Looking back to notice what went well, what sustained you, and what you’re thankful for can be grounding and emotionally protective. For some people—particularly those who are older, grieving, ill, or simply worn down by the year—forced gratitude can feel artificial or even painful. If the year included loss, fear, or loneliness, it’s reasonable if ‘counting blessings’ feels hollow…but gratitude doesn’t have to be dramatic or cheerful. It can be quiet, i.e. a habit that steadied you, a moment of beauty, a person who stayed, the fact that you are still here, still thinking, still caring.”
I hope that no one reading this is hurting as much as described above, but even if not, I have to admit that this past year has been rather tough, not only for me and some of my friends and relatives, but for the world, in general, as it has struggled to adjust to great change and an uncertain future. However, gratitude doesn’t have to be limited to the past year, and I’ll add another “blessing” to Chat’s list that covers our whole life—remembering the serendipitous encounters with people who changed our life.
The older we get, the larger our storehouse of those positive memories becomes. The earliest encounter I remember was right after college when I was stewing over what to do next. I just couldn’t find a path to take and felt lost. One day, as I boarded a bus to go into the city to meet a friend, I took the only seat left on the bus. The person sitting next to me introduced herself as Susan and began a conversation. During our chat, I told her my problem. She said that she’d just heard that AT&T was hiring a few programmers in a nearby town. I told her I knew nothing about programming or what it involved (this was 1969), but she encouraged me to check it out, anyway. I was very doubtful but decided to do what she suggested and got the job. I loved working for AT&T, which was a great company in those days. It was there that I met my first husband and had a lovely daughter.
However, in 1991, the company transferred everyone in my division to Atlanta. I was devastated at having to leave my beloved New York and had difficulty adjusting to the change. But one of the most important encounters in my life happened soon after I moved south. It was with a stranger, it lasted ten minutes or so, and it drastically changed the trajectory of my life.
I was feeding an injured duck at Stone Mountain Lake when an older woman who looked like my grandmother’s double showed up with food for the duck, as well.
I was so struck by the resemblance to my grandmother that I began a conversation with her. Her name was Arlene. Toward the end of the conversation, Arlene said that it was obvious that I cared about wildlife and Stone Mountain, and she strongly suggested that I attend a meeting of a group called the Friends of Stone Mountain who were dedicated to protecting the natural areas of the park. She wrote out the time and place of the next meeting on a piece of paper and told me she thought I’d like the people there. Not an enthusiastic joiner of groups, I hesitated but decided to give it a try. At the meeting, I wasn’t too impressed, but halfway through it, the door to the room opened, and two other group members walked in late. One of them was to become my future husband, Larry.
On that day, the direction of my life took a major turn and set me on a path I would never have taken otherwise. If I hadn’t met Susan on that bus in New York, I would never have ended up in Georgia. And if I hadn’t met Arlene, I wouldn’t have met Larry. Remembering them and other people who changed my life in this serendipitous way has given me a real boost at a time when I (and I’m sure all of us) could use one. If you remember similar experiences in your life, it would give us all a boost to read about them in the reply.
2 Responses
Julie, I love how those connections came together to take you right where you needed to be. When I graduated from college, I was offered a scholarship to a teaching college in Vermont. If I’d taken it, I wouldn’t have met my husband. I wouldn’t have taught the same students. I wouldn’t even have written the same books, because I wouldn’t have had the experiences that led to the ones I wrote. Sometimes people ask, “If you could go back and do it all over again, knowing what you know now, would you?” My answer is always “no,” because even though there are things I wish I’d done differently, any little change I made could end up with my never having any of the things I love today.
Thanks for that account, Beth. I know that there are people reading this blog who knew exactly what they were going to do with their lives from an early age, but I’m sure that even those people had serendipitous events happen along the way that helped them to reach their destinations.
As to what you said in your reply, there is a whole lot of weight behind your saying that if you had gone to teaching college, you “wouldn’t have taught the same students.” And the result of teaching those special students you taught resulted in honing a remarkable skill that led to your ability to teach difficult stuff to us adults. You are by far the best teacher I have ever had when it comes to all aspects of creating a novel. Your ability to shine a light on what is good and what needs work and being able to explain it so clearly is rare, and I’m sure that you had plenty of experience honing that gift as you taught your special students (whom, as you say, you wouldn’t have taught had your life’s trajectory been a little different). And the writing that sprang from the gift of your life experiences is also a gift to us in the form of thoughtful, interesting, well-written novels.