One of the great joys of my 30 years of teaching at universities and law schools across three continents—in Argentina (home sweet home), in Kenya, and in various places in the United States—has been forming bonds with my students. I enjoy hearing from them as they move on into the “real” world, and I try to keep them updated about my life too. To that end, I have developed an email list to which I circulate brief notes touching on topics ranging from my teaching, upcoming travel plans, visits with family and friends, movie and book reviews, and recent essays or articles I have published. Roughly 800 former students have joined the list.
In September, I alerted the list about my upcoming fall tour in the United States. I explained that I would start by seeing family in Miami, move on to present two lectures at Notre Dame—including one during the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture’s annual Fall Conference—and conclude with several days in New York and at Yale Law School. A former student of mine at Notre Dame Law School, Tim, replied to wish me luck with my lectures and explain that he and his family had their own upcoming trip to South Bend but would miss overlapping with me by just a few days. The next evening, while en-route from Miami to Charlotte Douglas Airport to make my connection to South Bend, I responded and asked if we could catch up soon via phone instead.
As I landed in Charlotte—after 15 years of connecting there on my way to attend the Fall Conference at Notre Dame—I wondered whether I would ever meet a friend or acquaintance in such a big airport. As anyone who has traveled through the Charlotte airport can attest, it is huge and almost always congested and buzzing with travelers rushing to and fro. A major hub for American Airlines, the airport contains five different concourses and routinely ranks as one of the busiest in America. It can take almost half an hour to walk from some gates to others. In short, it is not the type of place in which one is likely to have an unexpected encounter with a friend … especially if you are from a faraway country in South America.
But, as I stood on a long moving walkway heading down an interminable hallway toward my gate, Tim himself called out to me from the walkway heading in the opposite direction! I could scarcely believe it. In the seconds before we passed by each other as the walkways carried us in opposite directions, we agreed to double back and meet up. My past student, now friend, was on his way home to Missouri from a work trip in South Carolina and had a few minutes to spare during his long traipse across the airport to reach his own connecting gate. It had been a long time since we had last met, and it was a pleasure to sit down together and catch up. We even memorialized the meeting with a selfie.
What lesson—if any—can we learn from this encounter? One could, of course, chalk it up to mere chance or coincidence. After all, what are the odds? I was on my way from Miami to South Bend; Tim was on his way from South Carolina to Missouri. And although we had just exchanged emails about catching up soon, neither of us knew the other was traveling that day. The odds that we would not only cross paths but also notice each other amongst the sea of travelers in Charlotte-Douglas that evening were slim indeed. But this story lends itself to another, richer insight.
Pope Saint John Paul II once said that “in the designs of Providence, there are no mere coincidences.” God’s hand is always at work in the affairs of this world, even in the seemingly small matter of a brief meeting of old friends in a busy airport. Rather than chalking our meeting up to mere chance, then, I know that Tim and I were, from a higher point of view, meant to meet that night in Charlotte. And that, as Tolkien once wrote, “may be an encouraging thought.”
Santiago Legarre is a professor of law at Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina and longtime friend of the Rover.