The odds?

Several things happened in a very short time this morning on my way to the station that I think are all kind of related to each other. Maybe. I was walking down the sidewalk alongside the big Nagoya City Hospital in Sakurayama near where I live and I could hear solid heel strikes coming up behind me. As the man passed me, I kind of studied his hair and appearance. He was tall for a Japanese man and was wearing a black, pinstriped suit that fit well. He kind of struck me as a Monty Python-esque British businessman with a very erect, proper manner as he walked stifly with what looked to be an exaggerated sense of purpose. I though that maybe he was feeling like he was in the prime of his life. But that was really just my projection. As this was going on, I could see another person far ahead on the sidewalk who was wearing some kind of salmon pink outfit. As I got nearer, I could see that it was an older man, a hospital patient out for a morning walk or cigarette or both, something I see fairly often. The man obviously had no concern whatsoever about what others might think about how he looked in pink pajamas on the sidewalk during the morning rush of business people going to the station. I thought, here was this staid businessman, clearly in his world, and here also was this other, older guy clearly in his world, and that these world's were complete opposites but both completely okay for each of the people. I started thinking about why people, including me, worry so much about what everyone thinks about appearances. I mean, people spend a LOT of time on appearances. But really, for what reason? Some people care a great deal, and some not so much. And really, does it matter so much? As I passed by them, I came to a large paved area for taxis. The asphalt was still wet from the morning rain shower and was shiny in the morning sunlight. As I walked along, I saw a leaf on the pavement. Actually, there were a lot of leaves on the pavement but this one leaf was standing up all on its own and it had a little shadow, which looked kind of weird. Unique. Not something you see every day. Initially I just walked by, but the oddity of the image nagged at me--a leaf standing up--and I stopped and turned around and went back to look at it more closely. I took out my camera and took a few pictures of it, even getting down on my knee to get a good shot, with people bustling by, maybe wondering, “what on earth is this foreigner doing?!” I was thinking what the odds were of this leaf falling from a tree and landing so that it's stem stuck in a tiny crack in the asphalt. Like, for real? And then down there on my knee out of nowhere the thoughts of the staid businessman and the pyjama ji-ji popped back into my head and I started to think that there might actually be some weird thread that tied them all together. Something like everything having its own path, and that all paths are “right” for “every” thing. The businessman has cultivated a style of caring and appearance and manners and skills that are his, the pyjama man has cultivated one in which he can stand on a sidewalk in a strange neighborhood wearing pink pyjamas while smoking a cigarette completely at home in the belief that that is who he is; and this leaf, which can grow on a tree completely un-noticed by anyone ever, and then fall one day un-noticed, fall from a height with no guidance and land in a little speck of a hole on the asphalt and stand up straight, and that is its story which is 100% correct and all right for it; and I just happened to come by at just the right time and see it and put it together with the other thoughts in my head and get interested in it and take a picture and then type this up and then share it with blipfoto, and that is a path, too. How many things happened to come together to make all these things happen today? And I thought, THAT is one of the most enjoyable mysteries of life.