Here’s a lovely little story. It’s got little to do with anthroposophy, but it touches upon it in a curious way. J.P. Johnston went to Europe. Later, his european acquaintance sent him pictures from the trip — via mail. The friend got the address wrong and the photos ended up with Daniel Weston, who has been trying for six months to locate Johnston. He went through a lot to find Johnston: googling, phoning other Johnstons, posting flyers, driving to the homes of other Johnstons… A few days ago, the newspaper Sacramento Bee ran a story on his search. One of the photos was published with the story, and the speculations about Johnston in that article are quite lovely too; read them. So, who’s Weston (apart from the obvious: an extraordinarily inquisitive guy)?
Perhaps your average good samaritan would’ve ended the search at that point. Not Weston, a 57-year-old IT manager at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks and devout Buddhist who believes in good karma.
Well, here’s where it goes wrong — he’s, most likely, not a devout buddhist, although he might very well believe in karma!
What happened then is: somebody recognized Johnston. The two — Johnston and Weston — met at Rudolf Steiner College the other day to hand over the photos:
“I’m kind of hard to find,” Johnston, who works in IT security for a corporation he preferred not to name, told Weston, “but I’m glad you didn’t give up, though.”
“You know,” replied Weston, himself the college’s IT expert, “I just felt a weird connection. I just couldn’t stop looking. Maybe it’s because we look a lot alike.”
The two men, indeed, share a facial resemblance: wispy hair gone to gray and snow white beards. And once they started talking, they found other commonalities. Weston’s wife is named Laura; Johnston’s recently deceased wife was named Laura. They both have worked in IT and served on security cases. And they both enjoy travel.
(Ah, those karmic connections! Everywhere!)
