random variability as seen through a prism of love

the odds of any of us being born are stupidly small.

there are just too many uncontrolled variables requiring perfect synchronization, dusted with a generous layer of faerie dust, to predict any of us.

so it follows that the odds are smaller still that a couple decades after an improbable birth, any of us would follow a path leading to a random meeting with a person with whom we will fall in love.

think about it. if any one of a zillion variables changes anywhere along that path, the chance meeting never occurs. you walk down the opposite side of the street. you dawdle over a text message. you get hit by a bus.

you don't meet your person, love never blooms, everything changes. this is true for all of us, every day, but we just don't notice it. or we choose to ignore it because it's too big and too mind-boggling to tolerate much scrutiny.

somehow, amidst all this improbability, my friend rob met ronna. they had enough variables working in their favor that they fell in love twenty-some years ago. they stayed in love, mostly, changing together over time the way people must if they are to keep that little flame flickering.

because, again, any one of infinite switches could flip the wrong way and the love would be gone. politics could come between them, or religious beliefs, or a cute young thing from the steno pool, if there were such a thing as steno pools any more.

or, just by way of random example, something in the environment or a quirk of heredity or i-don't-know flying too close to the sun could one day lead to ronna discovering that she had breast cancer.

she and rob, not being the kind to let a little thing like that come between them, would wage all-out war with it, hammering it down and away and out of their path. they would do what strong, intelligent people can do to control the variables that come at us too fast and too numerous to count.

they would fight, furiously, for a good long while.

still, the cancer would take ronna from rob on a recent friday. it had the power to do that.

but it was powerless to take the love.

"you will see each other again in your dreams...where you'll both be bright-eyed and happy and healthy. may those dreams be more real than this reality."