en

En is a Japanese word I like. The best way to translate it would be "connection by chance." Some may say it's "by fate," and the word certainly has the sense of "being meant to," but to me, "fate" is too strong a word. En is more like paths crossing, the luck of it, and the connection that stays after you go different ways.

Moving around and going through some goodbyes, I started believing more in en. You meet someone, and the connection remains after a goodbye.

So yesterday, I had a plan to meet up with my friends from college. I was just having brunch when I thought of another friend, Jodi, whom I also met in college when she was here as an exchange student. We'd known each other since then, nearly for eight or nine years, though we'd only seen each other twice after she'd gone back to Vancouver. We'd kept in touch mainly thanks to the fact she's such a good letter writer, and now, I knew, she was living in Tokyo though she'd said she was going to visit Vancouver till mid Feb.

Just on a whim, I texted her, along with my number, asking if she was back yet and saying we should hang out if she was. She called right away and said, excited, "Oh my god, I just e-mailed you like five minutes ago!"

Turned out she'd sent me an e-mail to my PC asking for my cell phone contact info literally five minutes before I sent out the text. Some synchronicity, isn't it?

We ended up meeting up in Shinjuku, shopping and walking around the city while catching up, and having dinner and drink with the college friends in our college city. I hadn't seen Jodi in four years and the other friends in almost six years, but it felt as if nothing had changed. "You haven't changed at all!" we all told each other.

There were, of course, things different from the "old days"--different make-ups, talks of career, loves lost and found--that told me we were not the college students who would drink and fool around all night, but what we'd had was still there.

It's not even about keeping in touch. You may hardly talk, or never, even (I hardly talked with my college friends while I was gone), but the fact you met and shared some time of your lives won't go away, and when luck has it so, your paths cross again, and you pick it up where you left it off.

That's en, and, I tell you, it's a great thing to believe in.