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The Chance to Move Forward
by Maria Mayo Robbins, This I Believe
I
believe in chance. Strings of unexpected encounters mark my life. I believe that
chance has guided me — jolted me sometimes — onto paths I wouldn't have
chosen but needed to follow, whether I knew it or not. Chance encounters have
led me across continents and into unanticipated worlds.
At
21, I first visited Italy. As I struggled with a mouthful of college Italian to
find the word for "towel" in a hostel one morning, an older woman
laughed, straightened out my garbled attempts and invited me to her home. Chance
gently pushed me and led me to a lifelong connection to her family, their small
town of Castelfranco Veneto and, several years later, the opportunity to live
there.
But
chance is not always kind. When I was 25 years old, chance led an intruder to
break into my home in the middle of a quiet spring night. The violence of that
night and months of rehabilitation left me questioning how I could ever find
meaning in such a vicious stroke of fortune. But in the years that followed, I
drew even closer to my family and became a more empathetic friend. I relished
the ability to walk, or even run, on my own. I did all the things I had always
wanted to do: I pierced my nose, flew to Israel and hauled a rented grand piano
up to my eighth-floor apartment. I lived a life in vivid moments. I followed the
questions raised by the attack into graduate school, where today I continue to
study and work for justice for victims of violence. I kept going, and meaning
took hold in unexpected places.
As
a student of religion, I read and write about people and texts that desperately
seek cosmic order in a world of chaos. Coincidence threatens the divine order of
creation and must be explained. For myself, I believe that chance creates order
in the world. We can't choreograph life events, but we can clasp the hands of
those who appear in our paths and see where they lead us. So many chance
encounters have moved me forward, offering me direction and a sense of purpose
— if I was willing to follow.
My
belief in chance lets me see life as brimming with possibility: the person next
to me in line at the airport who becomes a lifelong friend, the professor in the
elevator who asks a provocative question or the soldier I meet at an outdoor café
in Jerusalem who takes me on a romantic tour of the city, leaving me with an
indelible memory.
And
as much as I have resisted saying this for many years, even the unwelcome and
cruel strikes of chance must somehow find their place in the order of our lives.
Believing this — believing in chance — I can always pick up my body and move
forward.