A Brief History of Life (my Life that is)

I woke up this morning thinking about chaos theory. I love this idea, that in all randomness and seemingly chaotic and unrelated behavior there exists order. I first learned of this theory from a university roommate (a male engineering student who arrogantly assumed that my little "training to be a teacher brain" could not possibly comprehend such a deep school of thought. As I recall he would also refer to himself as stellar this and stellar that. However he did share his love of Lyle Lovett music for which I am forever grateful.).

So this weekend got me thinking on chaos and how our lives unfold. We went to visit our friends Rod & Jullie in Comox BC. Rod & Jullie were the first couple we met when we moved to Vancouver Island in 1994. To this day, despite rarely seeing them over the past five years, they remain the kind of friends for which time apart has no bearing on our relationship. Spending time with them makes me realize how incredibly blessed we have been to share our lives with smart, caring and conscious people.

When we moved away from the Island in '02, Jeremy got work with a water utility in Halifax as a Watershed Manager, taking care of all forested lands surrounding the water supply. This was more or less a political position that involved a lot of PR. Last year he left the water company to take on a Divisional Forester position with a large forestry company here in Alberta. Part of the reason we agreed to come to Alberta was to be that much closer to the Island and be able to take weekend trips such as we just did. I'm not telling you all this to impress you (Jeremy is a pretty humble guy) but to tell you that the choices above came out of seemingly random but seized opportunity.

Rewind to the past weekend and Saturday night. We were together with our friends (many of them) for dinner. A lot of company restructuring has taken place over the past five years on the west coast and people who all used to work for the same company now work for several different companies. Personally, I'm glad we missed all of that shuffling as it was a time of great uncertainty and stress. But the dust has now settled and Jeremy was approached by a friend to apply for a position for which his current work and watershed work would be huge assets. Coincidentally, the two people he has consistently used as reference on his resume over the last ten years are in the hiring seats. The position actually just closed on Monday but special allowance has been made for him to apply late.

A part of me is as giddy as a school girl. Mostly because I thrive on change and also because the choices made in recent years seem to have been validated - they actually were leading us somewhere. And even if that somewhere brings us full circle, we learned things about ourselves and life that I am convinced we could not have learned on any other loop.

Of course I do not know the future and therefore do not know how this is all going to come out in the wash. We have all witnessed a sure thing head south (without us). But I do know that Jeremy and I were able to reconnect this weekend and it felt like the way it used to feel. And that was sweet. And we do love the Island.

Don't worry... I will keep you updated.

:-)