Dear Alice,

Today I started thinking about the many people I’ve met in the many wanderings of my life. I realize how many of them have shaped who I am now.

I wonder about the people I met at my elementary school and how I only know what two of them are up to now. Or about the people I met in high school, most of whom are living their best lives out in the world right now. Or even the people I met in college and how barely none of them are working in their fields of study right now.

I wonder about the people I met in my churches. How some of them are still going to the same church and how some of them moved somewhere else. How some of them left the church all together, and how some of them are thinking about leaving it.

I wonder about the people I met at the summer jobs and places I volunteered at, and how I think they’re all doing okay but I can’t say for sure. I hope they are.

I wonder about myself. About how my life came into contact with all these different people and how closely our stories wove together, but not they seem like threads that weren’t even in the same tapestry. I wonder if they think about me sometimes, I know I think about them.

This made me think about how people aren’t necessarily permanent, but their impact can be. I wonder how many lives I’ve changed without even knowing I’ve changed them. I remember one day in college, I ran into some of my former classmates. We’d taken only one class together, and we were close during that class. I barely thought about them at all, but it turns out they thought about me a lot.

You see, they were a couple now, with a couple name and couple journal and all that mushy stuff you see in the movies. Turns out my name was in their journal because I was the one who introduced them. I was the one who brought their stories together. They thanked me for that. I think they’re still together, but I can’t say for sure.

Isn’t that interesting? How we change lives without even knowing that we did. How people change ours without knowing they did. Being back home, I feel like I’m reconnecting with all those lives that were once a part of my story and aren’t anymore. It feels good to look back on that and see them in a positive way, and not in a dark way. It’s fun to not feel like a burden on other people.

Anyway, I gotta get back to being on vacation. I’ll talk to you soon.

Love,
Alex