In the past few weeks I've run into a couple of those magical people whose presence alone seems to shift reality to a higher plane. Everything suddenly feels lighter, easier, more clear. I laugh more easily. Ancient wounds stitch together and heal effortlessly. Life seems worth living. I've known a few such people in my life. I met the first one, Laura, when I was 16; though it took many years to fully appreciate her influence on me. Unfortunately, I've never been able to spend much time with these people. They usually live far away. Sometimes I've been a fool and a coward and not sought to catch up with them more often. Other times I tried too hard. Either way, it didn't work. But from the few days of their time here and there that I was lucky enough to enjoy, I get the sense that if I could have spent a few more weeks with them, that everything would have turned out differently. Not necessarily between me and them, but for me. I usually find it easy to figure things out. If there's something I want to understand, I can usually point my mind at it for a few minutes or hours or days and come out with a reasonably satisfying sense of how it works. But not in this case. At least not with months and years of observation and pondering. After decades of wondering, however, I have an idea or two. Mostly, I think these people know or are something that I also have in my core, but haven't yet fully uncovered. They have something I desperately want to learn and become. Sometimes when I notice the contrast between us, or the contrast between who I am and who I should be, I feel like a child. I feel like I've spent my entire life in kindergarten when I belong in sixth grade with them. I'm getting there slowly on my own, but I sure wish I could have enjoyed the fast track instead. Have you ever known anyone like that? I wonder if this is the experience many call "soulmates." I can see how such uncommon connection would lead people to leap to wild conclusions like how the soul once split and now seeks its former half. But despite how wonderful such connection works and feels, it's only one factor in creating a lasting relationship, and it's not always enough. For you cynics who are now thinking it was just infatuation, I'm not going to go into all the detail about how I know you're wrong, but you are, though there may have been some of that mixed in as well. In conclusion? Again, I don't really have one. Just a thanks, I guess, to these outstanding people and friends for shining a little light in my life, and to Heaven for bringing us together - which is another really fascinating aspect of meeting a few of these people. The most unlikely circumstances brought us together: a grandmother who lived a thousand miles away. A repeated university class just for the fun of it that I have only taught once and which I was asked to teach at the last second. I don't believe that was pure coincidence, and I wonder what the full purpose was. Just the small ways we influenced each others' lives? A few degrees of course correction here and there? A reminder of...I don't know what? I don't expect to ever answer that question, though I guess it doesn't really matter. Anyway, I gotta finish grading. Slater. I hope you all get everything you need for your own progress and happiness.