No man is an island

It's great that, just like in a journal - I suppose this is a journal of sorts, just very public - I can go back and read about what I had been doing and experiencing a year or a few months ago. This morning, I was looking for a specific entry...

Early June, I wrote about a guy on the subway who made people so happy by singing "Here comes the Sun" on a rainy summer evening. One of the few really talented artists who play on the subway to make ends meet and probably because they like it. We sure appreciated it. The whole train, with all the drunken people riding home at 1 am on a Saturday morning, joined in to sing with him, it was wonderful!

Last night, by total coincidence - isn't it always like that?? - I ended up at an Irish pub in Midtown, actually, the theater district, which I think is a weird area to go out in, but anyway, I ended up there, with a friend, playing darts (I should really be better at it considering I have to throw little pointy objects with my right hand, but I am really horrible :) All of a sudden, I heard the familiar "Here comes the Sun" played in the background. There was a guy with a guitar in the back of the pub, singing. It was him! The guy from the subway in June! I recognized his name too - Randy Stern - eventually. When he took a little break from his show, he went around with his hat collecting money - starving artist! I told him about my subway experience and he got so excited, we chatted for a few minutes. I love it that this kind of thing happens in a city of 8 million people and that 2 strangers can cross paths multiple times in life - who knows how many times really?? - and each time, have a little bit of an effect on each other. No man is an island.

It's a beautiful concept, really, so obvious yet so rarely do we remember. In John Donne's words (he lived in the 16th century):

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

He was a Christian and this quote obviously has some religious connotations, but I think it's incredibly meaningful in itself: we are all connected and we do not thrive when isolated from each other.