If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed.

Enormous outcomes often turn on trivia. A chance meeting, a delayed train, an attraction that had no business mattering: small things get into the machinery and redirect everything downstream, and afterwards we tell the story as though it had to happen that way. The tidy explanations arrive later. What actually happened was contingent, and it could easily have gone another way.

Hold your account of your own life a little loosely, especially the part where everything was destined. Then take the small interactions of this week more seriously than they seem to deserve. You cannot tell which one is load-bearing.