Just the other day a few of us were pondering some of the unknown. We were theorizing about how many times we might have met someone who was in relatively close proximity to us, but a connection was never made. Implied in this thread was the change in our lives that might have occurred had we actually met that certain individual. What impact might they have had on our lives?

A tangent to this line of thinking is how many close calls we might have had in life, but never knew because they never actually happened. Waiting an additional two seconds at a red light might have prevented us from being the victim of a reckless driver or perhaps getting on a subway a stop or two after someone with a disease coughed wildly and spread sickening germs might have spared us an illness. We will never know of course, but it is something to contemplate.

The video below from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows offers similar thoughts about this philosophical realm.

Moment of Tangency: A Glimpse of What Might Have Been

If two lines are truly parallel,
it means they’ll never actually meet.

Quoted from the YouTube video of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

Making this episode was a joy, but naturally took forever to find shots that paired up. Sifting through hours of people’s Super8 and 16mm home videos was one of the sweetest wisftully painful pleasures I’ve ever had. If you ever get tired of what the world has come to, browse around on Vimeo for old movies like this. Even just the soft grainy color of the film stock will make your heart ache.