The message from the cosmos was ...

Finally, the warm front came.  The rain came. The ice and the snow started to melt. It felt warm enough to head to the river without a gazillion layers on.

A jogger and a biker overtook me.  That was evidence in plenty that life was returning to normalcy.  A woman, who looked like she had a decade on me, seemed to be focused on the scenery as she was walking. As we neared each other, we smiled to say hello. "Beautiful landscape" I said as I continued to walk.

"Excuse me" she called out.  I stopped and turned.  "Did you move here from Napa?"

I have been asked different things, but not this.  

"You look so much like the guy who ran a bookstore a little bit away from where my husband and I lived."

I gave her the quickest possible version of where I am from after giving her a "from Napa, California? Nope."  And then added--after all, I am a university faculty who can talk on and on: "But, you know, strange things can happen. I move all the way to Eugene from Bakersfield and it turns out that my immediate neighbors are also from Bakersfield. What are the odds, right?"

Even in encounters of no consequence, it is not uncommon to ask the other what they did. Again, it is a part of our own respective identities. Apparently we are what we do.  We traded that information, too, before we got going in the directions that we were initially headed.

As I continued with the walk, I wondered whether I do the right thing whenever I do whatever it is that I do for a living. What if I am wrong?  What if I am merely a clueless idiot trapped in the fog on a dark night, but I am so clueless an idiot that I don't even realize that I am trapped in a fog on a dark night? 

The cosmos could not care less, and no point looking for answers there.  Life is simply what it is.  If I am a clueless idiot, then I am a clueless idiot.

A different day was born, but doubts piled in plenty.  Do most of the humans walk around with self-doubts?  Or, are they like me--merely presenting a facade of confidence and complete control?  

"Are you coming back to your office?" asked a student as I rushed out of my office to pick up a printout. "In a minute" I replied.

 She was there waiting when I returned. Walking into my office with me, she said she had a gift for me.  For having helped her out, and for being an honest teacher.

I liked that "honest teacher" part the best.  I did what I did because I would not have done anything otherwise. No student, even the most appreciative ones, has ever told me that I am an honest teacher. Thus, that phrase alone pretty much erased most of my self-doubts. And then the gift itself a huge bonus.

The emotional atheist in me considers these as secular miracles, even though the rational atheist in me knows fully well that the cosmos could not care less.  Life is what it is, and I have to do what I have to do.

But, yes, I love those secular miracles. They are awesome.  I prefer to think that the cosmos sent me a message. And this post is my thank you reply.