This Place of Connection

BY DEVNA PANDA WITH ART BY NATALIE WILLIAMS

Passerbys walk routinely along Washington Avenue. It is a day like any other. However, as these individuals go about their daily lives, rushing to arrive at the next destination on their harried schedules, they are unaware that there is an onlooker observing them. From the fifth floor of the Molecular and Cellular Biology, the view from the window of the lab I work in is the prime spot for people-watching. As I idly watch strangers pass by, familiar faces begin to stick out to me. The roommate of a friend I’ve fell out of contact with. My best friend’s boyfriend. A boy that lived in my freshman year dormitory. Even at such a large institution, I couldn’t stare out onto the street for more than five minutes without recognizing multiple someones. All of these seemingly disparate individuals are linked by an inextricable web of connection. 

Before I began pursuing my education at the University of Minnesota, despite having one of the highest undergraduate enrollments in this country, I did not thoroughly consider how its sheer size would factor into the experience of living and studying at this school.

When I first began college, the physical size of the school was somewhat intimidating. Everything seemed incredibly far apart from each other. If I met someone with whom I sensed a genuine connection, I would soon learn that they lived on the opposite end of the campus. It began to feel as if much of my circumstances were dependent on whom and what I was proximate. 

The unending rows of windows lined across my dorm building were simultaneously awe-inspiring and somewhat menacing. In each room was a person carrying motivations and ambitions similar to my own— each with their individual quirks and life experiences. How would I possibly go about finding the elusive, much sought after group of “my people” that I was supposed to seamlessly stumble upon in college? Even as I was meeting many wonderful individuals, I felt that the connections I was making were somewhat unrelated. 

Until recently. 

I walked into the apartment, observing the usual string of colored LED lights around the room. I had come to the party on a whim. Having spent the first half of the night with a friend, she had asked me to join her in stopping by a friend’s birthday party. I was only tangentially related to the birthday girl, at the event by mere coincidence. 

As the night went on and I spoke to more of the people at the party, a common theme began to emerge. Every person I met was somehow connected to another person in my life. A group of girls who had lived in my dormitory last year who now happened to live in my apartment complex. Earlier in the night, my friend and I had been introduced to a boy in my program. This boy had shown us a picture of his boyfriend on his lockscreen. Now, at this party, this very boyfriend was standing before us. My friend and I soon realized that we knew different people at the party in different ways but had never spoken to each other about them before. 

Now, all of these events occurring individually may not seem very consequential. The point is that all of these seemingly random people were somehow connected and had been connected all along even if I was only just now realizing it. Our lives had been occurring in timed synchronicity, each of us a few mere degrees of separation apart until our paths suddenly collided. 

That brings me to my next question. Can this phenomenon be chalked up to pure coincidence? Or are all of these unseen connections part of some cosmic master plan? Call it wishful thinking, but I’d rather believe that our universe is a well-oiled machine, constantly chugging and churning to coordinate two people meeting and impacting each other’s lives. Why shouldn’t I choose to live in a world that is a bit rosier, a bit more sprinkled with magic?

Wake Mag