Day 147 Separate Parallel Lives

June 2, 2015
Day 147

This planet is full of people. No, I'm not one who believes we are close to overpopulating. I have driven through too many barren places. Barren places that would support agriculture. But that's another topic. I marvel that the planet teems with life, human life. I find time to marvel, wonder, ponder, and think. Just ask my children about that. They hate when I'm pondering, I don't answer. Though the planet is teeming with life, I have always mulled over our separate parallel lives, especially when I am in a new location and out of state.


Like a maniac, I was taking pictures on Staten Island, succumbed by this concept- separate parallel lives. I had not phrased it, while snapping photos, I just understood it. "Why are you taking all these pictures?" Lynn wondered. I thought that a crazy question coming from a photographer, but oh well.



"Why are you asking?" I inquired. He says I never answer without first asking why. I hate to disappoint his expectations. He replied, "I just wondered."

I spoke of my intrigue, hinted at my concept. He was too busy looking and bypassing the Staten Island Ferry Parking Lot to wholeheartedly delve into my philosophical pinning. But I went on anyway, sometimes you just have to push through the non interest. I told him that I want to do a blog post about separate parallel lives. We separately parallel one another everyday in every part of the world with billions of people that we will never meet.  He too raised his eyebrows. He then asked me to help look for the parking lot. Enough said.

Separate parallel lives - a concept I have mulled over in my mind for years and recently coined the phrase. Thinking about such things gets me into trouble, I lose all track of time. And when driving, well, let's just say I should not think and drive. However, I am convinced you have thought about this as well. Your eyes have met the person driving the car beside you. You wonder at their story, their full life. Is it good, bad, dangerous, healthy, happy, fulfilling, or depressing? Are they involved in a robbery as our eyes meet, are they going to propose to the love of their life just now, or are they visiting their dying spouse in the local hospital?  In this lifetime, only your eyes will meet. But, more than likely, you have also thought about all the others you will never meet, those you are separately paralleling. We intersect with so many but in light of the numbers, it is truly minuscule and myopic in nature.

I wake up in Morgantown, PA, and exist in this town with a circle of people and their individual lives intersecting mine. We also intersect at a number of other common points. And yet there are others in this world I will never intersect with, they exist separately parallel. Though I wake up and cast not one thought their way, they nonetheless exist. Hence my pictures and my marvel.

So, to further my point, or confuse it, I drive through a place like Staten Island, a town that has nothing to do with my existence in Morgantown and I marvel that this town on this particular day, a day in which I would normally be in my hometown, is existing with involved activity by individuals I will never know. This is a keyhole peek into separate parallel lives that at this moment I am viewing. But tomorrow, though they will continue their activity, I will not be intersecting with them. It will be by faith that I know life exists on Staten Island, Barrington RI, or Geneva NY, for that matter. It is another world of existence completely independent of mine. I wake up in my place, they wake up in their place and we conduct our lives and we do not intersect. We lead separate parallel lives. We do not ever have to know about each other as we live our days leaving a story trail in our wake.

I am and they are. We don't have to be together to exist. We exist separate parallel lives everyday. None of us need to cast a thought in each others' direction. What makes us human is our ability to glance in someone else's direction, someone whom we have never met, someone we can not put a face to or never will. This is our God-given human trait, to think on such things. When filled with His spirit we are sometimes led to pray for non-intersecting, separately paralleled lives of those we will never meet, someone who needs divine intervention regardless of whether we know them or not. Mind blowing!