Sliding Doors....

A red woman in a black shirt was sitting across from me on the train last week. A black man in a red shirt sat behind her.

The three of us spent fifteen minutes together riding across town. I arrived at my stop. They kept on riding to theirs. Elsewhere.

I won't see them again. Or if I do, I won’t remember the first encounter. In cities we grow accustomed to living beyond people. We are passers. We brush shoulders in a busy intersection or waiting in line for a latte. Our lives rarely, if ever, intersect.

Eight days have passed, and I still remember the passengers on the train. I remember their color scheme: black on red, red on black. Improbable and remarkable. They could have been oil on canvas.

There is another reason that day lingers in my mind. The train ride and the passengers are a link to a favorite metaphor.

Sliding doors.

At the last minute you board a train, barely arriving before the door shuts. On that train awaits an old friend, and your life forges a new path due to the reconnection.

Alternatively, the train leaves a half-second before you arrive. You leave the platform, deciding to walk instead. Then a car runs through a red light and changes your life forever. All because you missed a train.

Doors slide in every facet of life: romance, work, health, family, and day-to-day routines.

My train ride for example -- seemingly identical to every other day. Then I was riding alongside a black and red painting, and it made me wonder about the inner-connectedness of six billion unknown faces.

Life boiled down to bridging moments. Near misses and makes.

But you can’t dumb things down without making them large again. Without asking larger than life questions about deities, faith, and determinism.

In that regard, the answers must be your own.

A door opens, a door closes, and life churns on in every direction but the one we expect. We get dealt randomness, and then we run with it. We do our part and influence what we can.

Which brings me back to the train ride of a week ago. A red woman in a black shirt. A black man in a red shirt. And me.

Somehow, we’re all connected.

A minor alteration in the cosmos, and they could be living in my shoes. I could be living in theirs.

It doesn’t seem that far fetched. Almost plausible.