The two questions that make me cry

Thoughts on love, endless possibilities, and people.

“What if I need to tell you something and you’re not here?”
The Wild Robot (2024)

A simple question recited by an animated fox to his departing robot friend, had me weeping into a bag of exorbitantly priced Sour Patch Watermelon sweets at the cinema. I have a running list of words, quotes, questions and overheard things, occupying the notes section of my phone. Words that have stroked my heart to such a degree, that I must keep them close. This desire to give them a home where I can go and visit them, to ensure they remain in my consciousness. This quote has been race-walking across my frontal lobe in the few weeks since I heard it. When the line hits my mind, it sets off a mental spark which instantly recalls the names of everyone I love. It’s similar to another quote I’ve carried within me over the years, so much so that the words feel like they could be my spleen or maybe a kidney. This thing silently existing inside me:

Image: Dreamworks Animation

“Today I had a thought. What if I had never met you?”
Sex and The City (2004)

Whenever I watch this episode where Carrie has a final dinner with the girls before leaving for Paris, I sob the kind of sob that would convince you I’d just been broken up with via a yellow post-it note. Both of these quotes are questions, and it’s in the space that comes as the question ends, that my heart swells. The space that then becomes occupied by thoughts of people. My people.

I wouldn’t classify myself as nostalgic, I’m not someone who yearns or sheds tears in the big kiss moment in romantic films. I’m a lovergirl but I’m also pretty pragmatic with matters of the heart. However, my beliefs, values, spirituality and worldview is one of romance. Romancing life. Being so swept up in the wonder of humanity and existence that my breath is momentarily stolen by something of utmost beauty, at least thrice per day.

These two questions about people, interest me, given that I’m quite adept at making peace with things. Being present with things. Having this non-attachment which allows what will be, to well, be. To trust in the fleeting, uncertainty of life that determines we will never know what must stay and what doesn’t. These quotes feel emotionally indulgent in a way that often exasperates me in films, but I am absolutely consumed by their sentiments. Why is that?

These questions remind me of the beauty of the vast possibilities that life holds in her chest. A Rubik's Cube of combinations and configurations. In fact, said cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible configurations. That’s 43 quintillion. A number so absurd that I don’t even know how to rationalise it. I think about life in exactly the same way. 43 quintillion possibilities at any given time. We have not a clue what will happen next. We question if this is all pre-determined or if there’s free will. We’ll never know.

The two questions I’ve mentioned in this piece, sweep me up in the notion that we were born not knowing which lives we'd touch. Who we would walk amongst. How many people we will love and be loved by. The friends. Lovers. Family born to and family created. All of the people we want to tell things to. All of the people we can’t even comprehend never having met. Even right now, in this moment, we have no idea of the hands we are yet to hold through the subsequent chapters of our lives. You might meet a new friend on a bus tomorrow who you’ll grow old with. Friday might be the day you meet a lover. Who knows. Maybe there’s 43 quintillion possibilities.

It’s interesting to consider why these questions make me cry. If there’s a grief to them. A fear of losing those I love, perhaps. “What if I need to tell you something and you’re not here?”, was spoken in the film when someone leaves and the pain and heartache that brings up. Similarly, the love in the words Carrie uttered, “what if I had never met you?”, also speaks of the sadness of even imagining a life without knowing her friends. Even the implication of it feels too sad to comprehend. People add so much, that thinking of them not being there is a hard one to reconcile. Of course, this is present for me, but it’s not quite the whole picture.

These questions simply remind me of just how miraculously magical I find the loves in my life. The loves that snuck in with all of their private jokes, tender touches, snort laughing and split in half pastries. The loves that I never knew I’d meet or expected to meet. Who I met in strange and achingly ordinary ways. One in 43 quintillion, huh. I feel so honoured to know the kind of people I know, where even the thought of not knowing them, causes my body to micro-gasp in disbelief.

I can’t help but devote time in contemplation to how crazy the odds of me meeting the people in my life are. As I said, I romanticise everything. I’m in a love affair with life. I get giddy when a leaf falls from a tree and feather touches my shoulder. I’m mesmerised by the soft hum of bees. I see signs in things that people often dismiss as a coincidence. I believe in magic, joy, hope, love and possibility, beyond and despite everything. I’m beholden to the profundity of all that is. I can’t get over how my life managed to collided with the lives of all the people who are in my life.

Shannon. The girl with the curly hair whose name I read on the masthead of a magazine. The magazine I then worked for. Sitting next to each other. Team meetings that turned into shared lunchtime picnics at our desk. The chances of even one of us getting the kind of jobs that feel as hard to get as auditioning for a starring role in a movie. The misfortune that led to me even applying. The move back to the UK. Sure, the job was pivotal to the plot of my life, but so was she. So was my friend Anita, who I also met there.

Becky. One Instagram DM, five trips to the US, thousands of hours of phone time, and a message thread that is so full our phones keep telling us to delete the chat, later. She had her own business, so did I. We connected over that. An opportunity to work together. Our first meeting which included a breakfast panna cotta that was far too wet, came and went, we then decided we were friends and before we knew it were sharing a bed in a random apartment in Chinatown. I had far too much fun growing up as an only child to want a sibling, but in her I have found what my soul only knows to be a sister. Instagram has over 2 billion monthly active users, and through all of that, we collided.

Nadia. Another friend told me to follow her online because she was sure I’d love her work. We randomly found each other’s page around the same day. Reading each other’s words, sharing each other’s hearts, it felt like a homecoming. She came to my book launch, and that was the beginning and continuing of everything. Now, we’re family. We would have always found our way to each other, I believe.

Sade. Ailey. Both started with message exchanges with zero expectations, that led to the most rich friendships. Coffee dates and bookshop browsing, voice notes and shivering together in sound baths. Lives that would never have collided without these screens. Asma. A client who booked in for a session with me, where we saw ourselves in each other, then turned into a dear friendship. Lorraine, the same. The three friends I met in Marrakech on work trips. The chances of being there at the same time and finding connections. Helen. Met in a random pub at a networking event, and our friendship outlived the lifespan of the actual group. Claire. An international student from NYC, only there for one year, we didn’t speak that much during class, then reconnected later on. A friendship of walks in Prospect Park to Fortnum & Mason. Having afternoon tea with both of our mums. Sabrina. The same appointment. Same time. Same hospital ward. In the place I never expected to find someone who now means so much to me.

John. My partner. We met on Hinge. A place I derided incessantly and wrote about at length, often in perplexity. I was happy residing in my complete refusal to believe that I would ever meet anyone in such a place. Like most of us, I had hopes for the famed first meeting being “in real life”. Fingers reaching for the same packet of gnocchi in Waitrose. Maybe sitting next to each other on a plane or something.

This is why you should surround yourself with people who can see magic in the spaces where you can’t. I can see the magic in a speck of dust dancing across hardwood floors, but I struggled to see it in dating apps. John has reminded me to be grateful for Hinge bringing us together, he speaks in awe of the spectacular odds of us meeting in the chaos of an unpredictable algorithm. On a platform, where I myself, wasn't even swiping anymore. I find my renewed perspective, when I think that through 1.5 million Hinge users, we found each other. A love that makes me want to pivot into a poet. I know we always would have found each other, in one combination or another .

I think that with all of these incredible people I’ve mentioned here. There’s a destiny to it, or at least a magic. The absurdity and awe of the circumstances, choices, and conditions that led to us meeting and sharing a life. I feel it with my mum too, our lives may not have unexpectedly collided, but we chose each other. I chose her to be my mother, and I know that more than I know anything. It is amongst all of these configurations and quintillions, my one certainty.

“What if I need to tell you something and you’re not here?”
“Today I had a thought. What if I had never met you?”

These questions are statements of love.

I’m grateful that these questions do so much to my insides. It’s proof that I am loved and that I have so much love in my life. It’s a reminder for us all that in this world of uncertainty, confusion and division, that the most poignant gift is having people. Having people to tell things to. People to send memes and silly GIFs to, people to send photos of snails and trees to, people to tell the most insignificant details of your day to, people to text during the day about something ridiculous you just witnessed. People to love.

It’s such an insane blessing that on this earth in all its 6,378 km, 13.1 septillion pounds (another silly number), and 8 billion people worth of glory; we can find others to do life with. That we find each other.

There’s a lot of fear, anger, grief and animosity lingering in the collective air we breathe. There is also so much love that surrounds us. May we all hold on tight to our “what if I had never met you” people and open our hearts to all the lives we have not yet collided with, who we will one day think of as such.