Littlewood's Law of Miracles

So, today is my birthday, and, as ever on my birthday, I am alone. 

BTW, thank you to Patricia and Jeanne who were both kind enough to send me birthday cards. Your kindness means a lot. 

My life sucks, and it's utterly pointless. I'm alone, I'm a failure, and I've got chronic pain that almost a dozen doctors now have not been able to address successfully. They know what my body is doing (effectively tearing itself apart). They just can't figure out why. 

And I've never mattered to anyone. 

I keep going, at this point, just out of sheer inertia, and also the awareness that people in my family don't live long, and it will all be over soon enough. 

A few years back, I went to Skylands on my birthday. I generally treat myself to a diet coke when I visit Skylands. Diet cola is my drug of choice. It really helps with my dyslexia and ADHD. Without caffeine, my mind is a hot air balloon following its own blissful path away from focus. 

I stopped drinking caffeinated drinks years ago, to see if that would have any impact on the chronic pain. I miss caffeine terribly.  I do treat myself on visits to Skylands. 

So, a few years back, I was at Skylands on my birthday and I got my diet coke and the can was inscribed with the words, "You've got a friend in me." I found that very touching because, of course, I was alone. 

I put the can down on a bench and took a photo. That photo is above. 

I actually kept the can for a few years but finally relinquished it in the past few months. 

So, this morning, I got up, reminded myself that it is my birthday, and sat down to work at the computer. 

I have I would guess over a thousand photos that I use as desktop backgrounds. Word shuffles them and they appear on the desktop background for ten or thirty minutes or so. 

A lot of the photos are of dogs, birds, nature scenes, leaves, handsome men (Gary Cooper, Hugh Jackman, Richard Armitage, Cary Grant, etc), winter, autumn, deserts, flowers. 

This morning, out of all these maybe thousands of photos, the photo that popped up from the Word-juggled shuffle was this very photo, that I took a few years ago on my birthday, a coke can promising me that somewhere, out there, I have a friend. 

Littlewood's Law of Miracles states that so many things happen per day that you will experience a miracle at least once a month. 

I'm underwhelmed by Littlewood. With a name like that, no wonder he felt a need to establish his own superiority to others. 

This photo greeting me as I sat down to work, alone, on my birthday, is a miracle to me. 

Or chance. 

Or a miracle ... 

Not really sure. But I liked it.