Last week I read Bruce Charlton’s post about his walk:

From ancient and modern Catholic folk piety, via Lord Armstrong and a Rabelaisian doctor, through a best selling novelist and a great concert pianist, to an Art Nouveau gem: my regular walk through Jesmond

It was winsome.  It appealed.  Like all good art, it had a kind of unity to it.  But in fact the only unity was Bruce Charlton himself.  His common enjoyment was all the different parts of his walk had in common.

That got me thinking.

Our lives are a unifying principle.  The common fact that we love them and lived them draw together otherwise discrete people and places.  Everything we touch becomes part of a whole.

Once one person is exalted we are all meaningful, because our lives are tied to theirs, or tied to lives that are tied to theirs, and we are part of their story.