=1*33*infinity

So I've been thinking about yesterday's events at Virginia Tech. I find myself putting a number on it, saying "33 people". And it's all relative, really. 33 can be a lot or 33 can be a little.

But then I got to thinking about how much potential impact 1 life can have, and decided that there really is no limit and there really is no relevant measurement. Every day we're in perpetual interaction with people and things. Our interactions impact those people and things, which potentially changes behaviors, attitudes and environments immediately and/or further down the line. It just spiderwebs. Every day in every situation -- we can't isolate ourselves or our actions. And we can't understand exponential impact. It's just too big and too complicated. We can't comprehend infinity.

Those 33 people led 33 complex lives, full of stories and experiences and success and failure and happiness and confusion. But their lives weren't just their own. Each of their lives had an impact on each of our lives before yesterday (but certainly yesterday).

I don't know any of the victims or any of the victim's families personally, but that doesn't mean that nothing I've done didn't impact any of them, and nothing they've done ever impacted me. I'll never know, and I never can know, and even if I did know I couldn't understand it. What paradox: being so small and insignificant in the context of the world, and yet being so influential in that our everyday actions set the course for human history.

And it could be closer than just ripples -- maybe I bumped into one of those 33 in an airport or sat in the same room with one of those 33 in a restaurant while on vacation. Maybe we were on the same plane. Maybe one of them opened a door for me or maybe I made one of them miss their bus. Maybe I forwarded along an email that eventually reached them and made their day.

It seems random, but what if it's not? If I can't grasp infinity why should I be able to find order in everyday life?

I like living in the city because everytime a bus or train passes me by I make eye contact with a person or two staring out the window. Who's to say whether they're the same people everyday, people I've met somewhere in a former stage of my life, or participants in the next great tragedy.