In the time that I’ve been on this planet, living my life and enjoying every minute of it, never once have I seen a true, honest-to-God accident. An accident is literally “An unexpected happening; an unfortunate occurrence; chance”. Not once have I seen something that falls under all of these headings. For example: at dinner a few nights ago, I noticed that my sister’s glass of milk was dangling dangerously close to the edge of her placemat, just asking to receive that little nudge that would sent it toppling over the edge. Now, no offense to my sister, she was being a little, well, crazy that particular night, the Italian inside of her peeking out through her violent gesticulations and hysterical laughter. And, soon enough, there went the milk, all over the table.
“Sorry, sorry.” the voice across the table said. “It was an accident.”

Now obviously, the milk being flung halfway across the table and all over the directory was an unfortunate occurrence, but was it really an unexpected happening? I watched every part of the puzzle fall perfectly in place (although it might only be in hindsight); the glass on the edge, the uncontrollable case of “the sillies”, and finally the milk splashing out of the cup, so it really wasn’t unexpected that this would happen. Now for the last part; was it chance? Was it chance that she placed the cup closer and closer to the edge, chance that it was that specific night that somebody decided to tell an uproariously funny joke, chance that the milk escaped the glass and spread to all corners of the table?

I believe that there is no such thing as coincidence or chance, and that there are no mistakes that we can make that do not have a greater purpose in our lives. Who knows? That extra address-book that we had to throw out because of the Category Five spill may have caused a huge fight later down the road, a fight over “whose address-book was whose” or “where did the second address-book go?” In my life, I have seen that everything has a purpose, from the smallest comment to the largest political action, and that everything is happening for a reason, whether we can see it at the time or not. Looking back on that night, I see that the spilling of the milk put an instant damper on the mood of the table, but upon further inspection of my memory, I remember seeing my parent’s upset faces as my sisters and I slowly destroyed the dinner-time conversation into a laughter contest to see who could laugh the longest, hardest, and loudest. As I remember it, the whole incident was absolutely ridiculous, and probably would have set the mood for the entire evening; the kids in complete ignorance and drowned out in their own hilarity and the adults in a frustrated, annoyed mindset. But that didn’t happen. After the milk was knocked over, we controlled ourselves and brought the laughter to a tolerable level, which allowed for a seamless night after the incident was resolved. So, the question that we have to ask is, “Did the spilling of the milk have an actual purpose?”

Another way that I like to look at my perspective of life is that life is simply the biggest jigsaw puzzle known to man. Each piece fits somewhere, reaching out and coming into contact with hundreds of others, but each piece is only the size of a pinhead in a puzzle that covers the globe. Knowing this, though, I haven’t arrived at the standard, stereotypical mentality of “live every day like it’s your last” or “every second counts”, but it causes me be more observant, more inclined to pay attention to details, more ready to draw connections to everything in life. I look forward to the next spilled glass or the next wrench that chance decides to throw in my life, because in my view, what fun would a puzzle be if all the pieces came put together?