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Have you ever felt like the right people came into your life at the moment you needed them?
Well that’s a theory called Six Degrees of Separation.
Yes, it is more than the Script song, though it has significant contributions in popularising it.
It says something like we are all six steps away from running into each other, the background being the shrinking world.
It says we happen to come across each other exactly when we must.
This reminds me of a poem by Sarah and Phil Kaye, “When love arrives”.
The concluding lines say, “ Love arrives exactly when it should and leaves when it must to which you should say, Thank you for stopping by”.

Beautiful, don’t you think?
Going back to what prompted this article, have you been introspecting your life a lot these days?
As it happens, no matter how much you hate it right now, take a moment to be awestruck at the ways it has branched out.
The perfect opportunities, the perfect companions and a perfect turn of events exactly when I am perfectly ready to embrace it.
Ofcourse it cannot be all happy go lucky, life has it’s own gray skies and the consequential rainbows!
Through all the associations you have made with people from diverse walks of life; saints, economists, bankers, writers, gypsies, social activists, radio jockeys, musicians, criminals with redemption and so on, you have hardly shared anything more than one conversation.
They have appeared at vital crossroads of life, showed you the way and left as suddenly as they appeared.
Don’t tell me you haven’t grieved the parting, wanting to know a little more, wandering why are they what they are, perhaps with a little inward sigh.
I don’t know if you feel the same, but with time, I have realised that I happen to leave behind a little bit of myself in all the conversations and interactions I have.
You cannot deny that there is absolutely no meaning in that old man telling you the tales of his life at the bus stand on a rainy day.
Maybe that is one of the reasons I am perpetually messed up yet never fully dishevelled.
They say it’s just one life time you get to live.
I say it’s the number of lifetimes you choose to live.
Maybe not on a first hand basis, but through the experiences of others, their stories, their emotions.
It’s a lifetime when you watch a good movie, another lifetime when you read a good story and a different one when you get to know a person.
Say right now, as you read this, you are probably wondering I am a nutter and at the same time thinking of someone whose life story you know. Yes you have lived a part of your life with them and in exchange been a part of another.
You have lived Belle’s life in Beauty and the Beast, Mia’s life in La La Land, Romeo’s life in Romeo and Juliet and The Joker’s life in The Dark Knight Rises.
You have lived your old neighbour’s life when he told you stories of the war front when you were a kid.
You have lived the grocer’s life when he told you how his wife couldn’t help him because of a paralysis.
You have lived a thousand lives in the little moments you shared, fully acknowledging the other person’s existence, forming a little whirl of thoughts in your head.
It doesn’t matter if you didn’t remember it the moment later,
But…
At that moment, you have lived.
You lived the limping old man’s life when you held his hand while crossing the road and that split second could have helped you decide wether you really wanted to leave home.
You could have looked at the child begging for alms on your way to a religious summit and wondered what exactly are you praying for.
You might have left home or had a pompous feast later, but what matters is at that moment, you did notice.
To me, that is what life is all about. The six vital steps to perception.
Last Updated on by kalidaspandian