courtesy of the year-end tax refund :)

lately, i've been in the habit (again) of buying books for myself. just two weeks ago, i bought lipstick jungle by candace bushnell (same girl who wrote sex & the city). last friday, i bought small miracles: extraordinary coincidences from everyday life by yitta halberstam & judith leventhal.

one of the ways by which they described coincidence is that it is a "random conjoining of inexplicable events that defies our sense of the reasonable". the stories in the book support this definition. indeed, how would you explain siblings reuniting after over thirty years, in the post office where they both ended up working? how would you explain a woman finding her lost house key in a train station she didn't even come near to during the day? & what do you make of the blind date that reunited two friends who were separated from each other fifteen years ago in a concentration camp?

a lot of us would probably say that these things are nothing but flukes of nature. the ones among us who are more spiritual in thinking would probably say that God had planned these all along. cheesy as it may sound, i subscribe to the latter opinion. it has often amazed me how some of the things i need come to me at the precise moment that i need them, not long after i have prayed for them.

it is my wish that now that i have finished reading the book, i will be more sensitive to the "small miracles" that unfold in my life. i find it so lonely that most of us (i, included) only notice things that are grandiose in scale, & overlook the little things that make each day slightly less typical & slightly more magical.

(in hindsight, what a fitting way to start the new year. :) )

ps. thank you Lord for the tax refund that liquidated me enough to buy this book without guilt. :)