Who's Life Will You Change...??

Serendipity: to make discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things not in quest of. (Wikipedia)

Ever since I was a teenager, my Uncle Neil has been telling me the story of a woman he met on a Greyhound bus one day while en route to meet his girlfriend at the time. During their short time together, she managed to convince him to apply to law school at the University of Western Ontario, which diverted completely from his initial future plans. Ultimately, he got accepted to UWO, started law school that fall which, in turn, is where he ended up meeting is wife and the reason that most of our family ended up moving to London in the first place (which also led to my other uncle meeting his wife). He loves this story so much because it is one of those very distinct moments in his life where the chance meeting of a stranger at the right time changed the entire course of his life and many of ours.

When he tells me that story, it often encourages me to reflect on my own days gone by and look at many of the choices that I made along the way. And though it's not an easy task to pin point the moment in which a specific corner was turned, I believe that there have been certain serendipitous encounters that have altered the entire course and direction that my life was taking at the time.

The one that stands out the most to me is during the summer of 2001 when I was working in an ice cream store just after graduation. During one unusually quiet day in the market, a girl came to the store that I had gone to high school with back in London. She was a senior the year that I started grade nine hence, I really didn't know her other than to recognize her face and we had never spoken before that day. While having some polite conversation regarding our lives and what we were up to, I mentioned how I was finding it difficult to decide what field to go into now that I had graduated. She had mentioned that she was just leaving one job to start a new one and asked me if I would be interested in passing on my resume in the event that they hadn't already found a replacement for her. With absolutely zero expectations at all, I forwarded her my resume later that week and went about my life. By the end of that summer, I had been hired to replace her on Parliament Hill...

Had it not been for that right moment at the right place, I never would have met my co-worker who was moving out of his apartment and looking for someone to take over his lease (and I had been looking aimlessly for an apartment that was suitable)...I never would have met my friend that "encouraged" me to give online dating a try...hence I never would have met my husband. I never would have had to work for the absolute worst person in the history of the world which encouraged me to look for work elsewhere...which lead me to the Gallery...and so and so on.

All this to say that, although I didn't see it at the time, that moment changed everything. What's even more amazing is that I'm sure my fellow school mate and the woman that my uncle met on the bus had no idea that the brief moments spent in their presence changed someone else's life forever. It sort of makes me wonder if a conversation that I ever had with a stranger produced such a ripple effect?? Then again, maybe we are never meant to know.

As incredible as some of these stories are, our lives are always touched by others in less obvious, more subtle ways. The admiration and inspiration that others can create on a day to day basis equally effect our lives, sometimes in ways that even we can never really know the depths of. In light of this, I've decided that it's time to recognize some of those people that truly impact our lives and helped us become the people that we are today.

I have had the very fortunate blessing of meeting some of the most outstanding people in my life and frankly, you should make every effort to try and meet them as well!!! Hence, I am going to put together a list of all the people that you should try to meet during your life...trust me...you won't regret it!! Let's call this new series of blogs "Style & Substance" (because that's what it takes to change the world...even if it's just one person's world!). Sit back, relax and make your plan...because those featured in S&S should certainly be a part of it!!

Stay tuned...