After I left work the other day, I walked down Church Street to my bank to withdraw some money. The coffee shop that has been serving as the gateway to my creativity lately won’t serve me at all without cash. On the walk from the bank to the coffee shop, I spotted Sarah the L sitting outside, soaking in the sun and the words of her most recent read. (As small as this town is, I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to these pleasant surprises it has to offer its residents.) I sat down at her table and we caught up each other on our respective lives. We talked about past and upcoming events, what candy we’d choose to have a lifetime supply of (her choice was caramel, mine was truffles), shared life advice, and snuck in one or two metaphors and idioms for good measure. As always, our conversation helped me to finally articulate the thoughts that had been floating around in my head, and considering I was en route to another evening of writing (this blog entry actually), this encounter’s timing was impeccable.
Last month, one of the modern greats, Ray Lamontagne, came to town to play, sing, and prove once and for all that even the socially awkward have a place in the world. The show, albeit a little too short for my tastes, was everything I had hoped my second Ray concert would be. It began with six of my favorite notes (though, whichever saint watches over great musical act beginnings was napping because Ray quickly broke a string on his guitar and had to begin all over again), Ray’s voice filled the Flynn like a smoke ring from a velvet cigarette, his band complemented him without trying to steal the show, and the songs were arranged in a way that was both refreshingly familiar and delectably new. To make the night even more memorable, I experienced the concert in a second row seat next to my father, marking the first time Papa Benchly and I had been to a concert together since my parents took me to see Peter, Paul, and Mary, and the first time Papa Benchly had been to a rock concert in a long time. Mama Benchly doesn’t like to go to rock concerts and so my dad waxed poetic about the concerts of his past, which included The Doors(!). I think this father-son outing was yet another impeccably-timed surprise for both of us.
Papa Benchly accepted the invitation to join me at the concert approximately one hour before he accepted my extra ticket and joined me at the concert, and to ignore this detail is to sugarcoat a night coated with a bittersweet frosting. You see, the extra ticket was intended for Cherry on Top, and ultimately became Papa Benchly’s a few hours after my relationship with her ended. As much as she may have subconsciously expected it, my impression is that our break-up came as a surprise to her (even if we know it’s coming, we still don’t want to believe it). And with as many break-ups as I’ve been through in my life, I still don’t know that I’ll ever get used to the respective pains of breaking a heart or having my heart broken. But to ignore the next surprise of the night is to not acknowledge the other (equally distinct) half of that bittersweet frosting. You see, as great as Ray Lamontagne was, he wasn’t my favorite musical act of the evening. That honor goes to the opening band, the phenomenal The Low Anthem. You should expect to hear more about them in the next year. And I will expect to one day wax poetic to my son about the time I saw them open for Ray Lamontagne.
Whether you call them a box of chocolates (or caramel), coincidences, serendipity, or happenstance, we can all admit that life is full of these tiny surprises. Happenstance is the title of a French film starring one of my favorite actresses, Audrey Tautou, in a plot based on the Butterfly Effect, the theory that even the smallest variant can alter the future in grand ways (the original title was translated as The Beating of the Butterfly’s Wings). The movie was essentially the 97-minute feature-film-version of the ongoing TV series How I Met Your Mother. Both the film and the TV show revolve around a protagonist looking for his/her “true love”; the obstacles and triumphs each experiences along the way; and the seemingly-random, but ultimately-important events that point each in the right direction. And if you think I’m not a fan of both the film and the TV show, then, well, you haven’t been paying attention the last five(!) blogging years.
All of this is to say that the question that has been occupying my mind lately has been whether or not these moments in my life have a purpose; and to be specific, whether they can be interpreted as some sort of indicator of my life’s purpose. We all like to think we have a purpose in life. In the underrated film Road Trip, one of the characters says he can’t die young: “Something tells me the people of Earth are going to need me.” And I’d be lying if I said that on occasion, I hadn’t felt the same way. As chaotic and scary as this world can be, isn’t it comforting to think each life has a master plan in the shape of a big inviting safety net? Get your heart broken? Don’t worry, it’s just part of the plan. Your car got towed because you tested the Rite Aid parking gods one too many times? That’s OK, everything happens for a reason. Afraid of failing? No need to; failure is just a lesson waiting to happen. And the more we believe this, the less we fear those leaps of faith, the more confident we become, and the less inhibited we act. Through our acceptance of the unknown, we find our strength.
But what if we’re wrong? What if there is nothing guiding us except dumb luck and chance? What if we have every reason to be afraid and are naïve to think otherwise? What if, like Wile E. Coyote, we’ve run off a cliff and the only thing keeping us afloat is our ignorance of the air beneath our feet? And to beat this analogy to death, what if the path we Road Runners have chosen through the mountains of life is simply a Trompe-l’œil? As has been the trend lately, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer except to say follow your heart. And because the blessings in my life have me feeling overly optimistic today, I’ll even go so far as to say maybe if you follow your heart, you’ll find your purpose and end up proving you were right all along. In that sense, I guess Ray Lamontagne was right after all: “The answer is within you.”
Benchly'sword 
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