Thanksgiving 2008 Dame Fortuna

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Originally uploaded by Randuwa

It's hard to turn on the radio or the TV and not find some one declaring what it is for which they are thankful. After all, it is Thanksgiving!

So here's my 2 ¢ for this year: I'm thankful for Fate.

Last evening I found myself on the #16 Ride On Metro Bus on my way to retrieve my car from the auto shop, when this article flashed before my eyes. Only a month earlier, on another #16, 14-year-old Tai Lam was accidentally shot to death by a member of the Latino gang MS-13.

In the back of the bus I was riding on was a group of young African American males talking up shit with lots of "fucks" and "nigga's" and laughter while two young women giggled and shot them glances of disbelief, flirtation, and faux-shock.

I sat behind the driver and across from me were an elderly black woman and a young Hispanic woman with a baby girl in her arms. Half a dozen assorted brown skinned men and women sat around the middle of the bus holding shopping bags, a valise or two, a cane.

Within moments the bus was well past Quebec Terrace and the crime scene. It lumbered up Piney Branch and near a set of formerly public housing apartments, the two young women in the back of the bus rose to exit. As they did they turned to the young men and said, "Please, be safe."

I'm sure when the teenaged son of Vietnamese immigrants got on this bus, he felt safe. He'd taken the bus a gazillion times before. But that night, it was his fate to be first a witness to an argument between rival gang members and then their latest victim.

Fate is not a collective experience no matter how much we work together to achieve a goal. We each ultimately find our life's path to be filled with it's own fortunes, it's only tragedies. Wednesday's bus ride reminded me how diverse and how capricious fate can be.

And even with the sadnesses that have from time to time found their way into my life, thus far, my fate has been benevolent, unremarkable, and fortunate. And on this “Turkey Day” I am thankful for it.

What are you thankful for?