I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. I can't assume that something doesn't make sense just because I don't understand it. (Or that something doesn't exist just because I can't see it. Or that something is broken just because I can't make it work.)

I also think it's important to remember that not everything is of monumental significance.

Think about how many things are happening right this second. I'm taking up probably too much space at this table in the library, partly writing this and partly helping my friend with his paper and partly trying to convince him to switch into my math class next semester and flirting over state lines with a handsome santa (SIDE NOTE: I love texting only because you can filter out people who can't construct a sentence) and drinking coffee and taking my shoes off and then putting them back on and then taking them off again, on repeat. All around campus people are taking finals and studying and hanging out and eating and laughing and trying to park. You're doing whatever it is you're doing. People all over the world are catching buses and riding trains and hailing cabs and boarding airplanes and sailing boats. People are pouring concrete and planting trees and standing in line for movie tickets and changing lightbulbs and fixing shingles and painting pictures. There's a lawyer briefing someone, there's a mommy changing a diaper, there's an addict scoring. A little girl is learning how to play the ukelele. A middle-aged man is grading papers at his wife's side in intensive care. People are singing songs and honking horns and sitting quietly in parks. They're sweeping floors and feeding elephants and lifting weights. They're climbing mountains and taking pictures and turning pages and plowing fields. And mountains are crumbling and plates are shifting and continents are sinking and plants are growing and glaciers are doing whatever it is that glaciers do. And things have been happening for, like, a bajillion years. Thereabouts.

Think about how when someone asks you what you're doing and you say "Nothing" you're lying, because you're always doing something. Then times that by how many people are on the planet. Then times THAT by how many living things period are on the planet. Then take that ginormous number and multiply it by the number of things that go through a brain at any given moment, by all the steps in every process for everything ever. Plus all the stuff happening on the cellular level, the atomic level, you know what I mean, you guys are all scientists. Then. Then you have to add all the stuff in the air and in the sky and in space and beyond space and a little after that even. (I took the last part of my math final today, by the way. That's why this math is so accurate. I've been practicing.)

Obviously besides Home Alone 2 en Espanol, and well okay, possibly the "Puberty and You! [And Your Whole Class! Including That One Boy Who Will Sigh Wearily, Sit Back in His Chair and Say 'Man, it Must Be Hard Being a Girl!']," this is the best thing I ever had to watch in school:





So I don't really believe in coincidence? But not because I think everything that happens is meaningful and important. I just think there's so much going on all very close together that there's no way we're not all connected to everything else. Some things happen for little teeny tiny reasons. And sometimes big things happen for a whole mess of little teeny tiny reasons all together. Which brings me, I think?, to the point I wasn't sure I was making, which is:

The reason she looks so irritated is that right as I took this picture I informed her that she was not, in fact, a book. Also I asked her if she wouldn't like to sit somewhere more comfortable, maybe in a place where her tummy would fit? Also it is because that is what she always looks like.