If the definition of jet setting is getting on a plane to spend less than 24 hours in a city, well then I am jet setting. I am sitting at the airport waiting for a flight to Minneapolis to visit my sister. My flight was schedule for 7 am and I would have been laughing it up by now if Delta had not cancelled the flight. Instead, I land at almost 2pm and get back on a plane tomorrow at 2 to come back. In between promises to be a great time with Kathi who I last saw in July in LA.

Kathi is 3 years younger than me which makes no difference now but certainly did when we were growing up. I got when she was still in high school…me just barely out. We became best friends, talking nearly every day for 26years until my divorce somehow also ended our best friendship. Kathi pretty much kicked me out of her life which I don’t quite understand to this day. However, she is back in, I am back in. Our trip to LA put us there. I was scribing for Marianne Williamson and Kathi came out to help. Somehow we found each other again.

I don’t think about the years in between so much but I wonder why we had to come apart as we did. Certainly a lot of life happened in the meantime. The question that makes its rounds in my head is why now? What is happening that brings us back together now? Are we seeing the passing of life? Are we both embracing who we are and that brings us back to those days when we were young and dependent upon the existence of each other?

Life is very interesting from the vantage point of 50 something. It is easier to see how things fit together. I have a greater trust that all works out and that even the so called bad stuff in life is purposeful. We are not in this life alone. We have an effect on others. I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about a man in a town that was decimated by the tsunami in Japan last March. He took over the family bakery business after college, not what he was planning at all. At 54 he watched from high ground as wave after wave plowed over his town. When it all subsided his bakery along with the rest of the town was gone. he is now finding, as he rebuilds, how important his baked goods are for people who are looking for places of comfort, places of home. Not a very earth shattering, world saving kind of work by most accounts. Simply a remembrance of how life once was, giving strength for others to keep going.

We never know how the seemingly small things affect others…until we pay attention. A nod, a smile may be all it takes to change a days experience for someone.