Mr. Random Stranger in the rain

(Wrote this some time back but decided to post it after listening to Sparks Fly because I think it's the perfect soundtrack for this story;) Click and listen while you read if you want :))

"There’s no such thing as an ordinary person,” he said, when I told him I was nothing special, just an ordinary girl.

“Every single person you meet is a story waiting to be told.”

He was always saying things like that. Making me think about what I believe. Going against the norms and questioning everything.

We met on a dark, rainy evening. Two strangers waiting for the same train. One totally oblivious to the presence of the other (me, of course), mulling over the day that had passed and impatient to get home.

He said it was captivating how engrossed and wrapped up I was in my thoughts. I couldn’t understand how he could find a tired, disheveled and damp (from walking to the station in the rain) girl captivating.

But he was irresistable like that. “So? Can’t I find a tired, disheveled, and damp girl captivating?” he teased.

“I hate the rain,” I complained. “It makes it hard to go anywhere without an umbrella, slows down traffic, and disrupts people’s plans.”

He laughed. “It also nourishes the plants that give off the oxygen we breathe. And there’s no better way to enjoy a cup of coffee than when it’s pouring outside. So what if your plans are disrupted? We need reminders to slow down and breathe. We rush through life too fast.”

He rode the train home with me that night. He asked if I had any plans, and I told him that I had some work to catch up on. He gave me a slightly amused look, one that seemed to say "as if anyone would be caught dead working on a Friday night" - to which I rolled my eyes and retorted that some people had to earn a living, and not necessarily in the manner they’d prefer.

He asked if he may interrupt my plans. I said yes.

We had dinner at a nearby cafe and coffee after as the downpour faded into a drizzle. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

“Where? There’s no park nearby.”

“Just around.”

“What’s there to see?”

“Everything. Or nothing. Your choice.”

He was always speaking in riddles like that.

I sighed. “Okay, fine. Let’s go.”

He chuckled, as if enjoying some private joke.

“What?!?”

“Nothing.”

I rolled my eyes in mock exasperation. Which only brought on another chuckle.

“Am I some kind of amusement to you or something?” I huffed.

What + if? = the power to change your life

Just before heading to church today I wrote a post about how all love stories essentially involve risk - and how risk is scary.

Imagine how timely it was to be sitting there on a Sunday morning and listening to the speaker talk about risk.

He used a quote from Letters to Juliet to illustrate this risk:

"'What' and 'If' are two words as non-threatening as words can be. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: What if? What if? What if?"

Uncertainty is scary. 'What if?' is scary. Because it involves not knowing how things will turn out. Which means things could turn out to be painful.

Then he talked about passion.

He said that passion is not some feel-good emotion - it involves deep, intense suffering. I looked up the word and found that it is actually derived from the Latin word for 'suffer'.

But without that risk, without that passion, that suffering... we will never know what it means to venture out into the unknown anyway, and maybe find what you were looking for, hoping for, dreaming of, chasing down.

Someone asked me how I find the time to write so much. I said my writing was the product of sleepless nights. Adam Young of Owl City has confessed the same of his music. The most talented people I know do their thing as if it's second nature but behind the scenes, off the stage, what nobody sees are the hours upon hours of pure passion poured into their crafts.

Nothing worth having comes without sacrificing something.

Everyone who has found something worth living for - has found something risking and suffering for.

The question is, what are you taking risks and putting yourself through pain for? The wrong things? Nothing?

Those things say something about what you live for.

What if you don't let yourself be defined by others and dared to let your potential shine?

What if you were more afraid of not trying than of failing?

What if you spent as much time helping others as you spend focusing on yourself?

What if?

What if you weren't afraid to make mistakes and say sorry?

What if you were brave enough to face your past?

What if you looked into the mirror every morning and saw someone worth loving?

What if?