What are the odds?
The odds of anything really. The fact that you are here reading these words. How did that happen and what does it all mean?
How it happened I can speak to but what it all means is above my pay scale.
Yesterday I found myself at a hockey rink with my son at a goalie clinic. That in itself is not unusual nor was the conversation that I had with my son’s friend’s dad. What is however odd is that I discovered to my surprise that his father and my father, and I for that matter, were all born in the same town of Bydgoszcz.
Crazy I tellz ya!
Normally when I enter into conversation with anyone in Canada, they know very little about Poland let alone anything about my home town. Spelling is a challenge for most. Pronouncing it a whole other matter.
So here I was, talking to this man about a place where his father and mother, and my father and mother, and my own steps have taken me.
Bydgoszcz is a Northern Polish city. It is the eighth largest city in Poland but it wasn’t always thus. It started out as a slavic settlement and was later occupied in the twelfth century by the German Teutonic Knights. It became a part of Poland again later that century until 1772 when Russia, Prussia, and the Hungarian Empire decided to remove Poland from existence. That is why Chopin ended up in Paris, but that is a whole other story.
I’m skipping a a bit here to the end of the first world war. Poland was allowed to be Poland again, and my town became Polish again, until 1939 of course, when it became German. The game of ping pong continued one more time and in 1945 it changed hands again.
Quite the history I think but what are the odds that this father and my father come from the same place in the world. One is German and the other one Polish and yet they there were sharing oxygen and space at the same time.
I find this fascinating and wonder what to make of it.
Most of all it makes me appreciate life more. Makes me realize how meaningful life truly is, how unique, how unbelievably rich.
I think I need to start talking to a lot more people because I think there are greater odds to be had.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@csbphotography