Susan Watkins -- Topic of Choice 4

Something we talked about in class after watching Wings of Desire the other day really struck me as interesting, and then it came up again in a conversation I had with one of my good friends. The topic was "conincidence" vs. "intentionality," and I've been thinking about how I live my life and relationships in these terms.

So many people in the world today allow their lives and relationships to be goverened by the random nature of coincidence. They live independently of their surroundings, with their attentions focused inward for the most part. If they are in relationship, it's because they just happen to be around someone often enough to get to know them-- or, if they do exert effort, it's only with people who just happen to have similar personality traits already. Their existence is a co-incidence with the existences around them: they do not depend on eachother, they only happen to be going on in the same place at the same time with no direct correlation. If one were to cease or change, the other would be largely unharmed/unchanged. I wonder if we've become this way out of laziness, or maybe fear that we might become dependent on eachother and then lose something we need and love.

The thing my friend realized, though, was that we have the opportunity to decide how coincidentally-minded or intentional we are going to be in any given moment. This is true in all areas of our lives-- we can decide to either engage with life on a deep level or just kind of skate through-- but it is especially true when we are around people we don't know very well. Every interaction has the potential to be meaningful, even if it's not "deep." We can contribute largely to how meaningful an interaction is by how much of our attention we give to it. When someone walks up to us and we continue using our cell phones, computers, or doing something else, we are not engaging in that relationship fully and are living "co-incidentally" with that other person. However, if we take the time, even 5 minutes, to invest fully in what we're talking about and in that other person's ideas and feelings, we are living intentionally and tapping into boundless potential for real connection and real life.