Our Stories Are All One

“That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you a separate a breeze from the wind.” What does this mean to you?

 “That there are no random acts.” All actions, whether intended or unintended, simple or complex, have consequences. If you act on something it is going to impact the life and choices of someone else as well as your own. Eddie expresses this idea when talking to Noel at Ruby Pier. Eddie says, “Look at that guy...I promise you, he’ll drop that cigar on the boardwalk…It falls in the cracks, then it starts to burn…Yesterday I grabbed a kid…about to put a cigar butt in his mouth” (page 130). In this basic story, Eddie is saying that there are no coincidences; “there are no random acts.”

 “That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you a separate a breeze from the wind.” This part of the quote means that all creatures are intertwined. Although the characters may not be aware of it they “are all connected.” An example from the story is the link between Eddie and Ruby. Even though they never met in life, these characters had an impact one another. Eddie’s father and later Eddie worked and spent countless hours at Ruby Pier, which was constructed and named in honor of Ruby. Later, Eddie’s dying father and Ruby’s husband shared a hospital room and although Eddie’s father was unaware of his roommate, Ruby was conscious of who her husband was sharing a room with. Ruby knew the true details of Eddie’s father’s death.

I think that this quote ties in with the prompt. “That each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one” (page 196). We are not here to simply fill up space; without each of us, every place and every person would be different. We are all affected by the actions and choices as well as the mere existence of the others.