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That Moment when Everything Changed

 


Have you ever had one of those moments when you are going along with your life and suddenly something happens that throws your life into reverse? Sure you have. Everybody has. You lose your job, or you get a bad medical diagnosis, or the unexpected death of a family member. You go from everything is fine, to everything seems broken.

Books, movies, plays and songs are written about just such events. Young Hamlet must have been having a great life, he was the prince and would one day become king. He was living the college life away in foreign country. He was on top of the world. But then he gets news that his father is dead. By the time he makes it back home to Elsinore, his uncle has married his mother and has been named king. What a turn of events. Then his father’s ghost tells him that the uncle killed him. It’s enough to drive one mad, or to drive one to pretend to be mad.

Sometimes the event that changes our world is a collective one. Everyone who was alive in 1963 knows what I am talking about. For decades after, you would hear the refrain, “do you remember where you were when you heard that Kennedy had been shot?” We all remember. It was seared into our brains forever. The world seemed different afterwards. It seems like every generation has their Kennedy moment: a global pandemic, Pearl Harbor, the Space Shuttle disaster, 9/11. Shock is the operative word. These are moments of shock.

But your world can change because of good news too. It tends to be less dramatic than the big bad news unless it is the cliché of winning the lottery, but an unexpected job opportunity, discovering a talent that you didn’t know you had, or an unexpected kiss can rock your world. As much as a bad diagnosis can shake up your life, if it is followed by a good one, it can put it back together again, albeit probably in a more mindful way. Good moments are sometimes enough to change your whole world view. Romeo and Juliet meet and fall instantly and hopelessly in love. Their lives are changed forever by that moment. But wait, you say, that is a tragedy. They die. Yes, but do you think if you could ask Romeo or Juliet to trade that meeting in order to have a long life, would they do it? I think not.

All of these things, good and bad, shape us. We are defined, not by the event, but by how we deal with it. I have known people in my life who have had more than their share of misery. Life has been unfair to them. Some of them wallow in their misery. They complain and rage and tell everyone how unfair everything is. But others make a different choice. They choose to make the best of it. They choose to appreciate the good things they have, and not to dwell on their misfortunes. That does not mean that they let people walk all over them, but they choose not to spend too much time crying over things they cannot control. I know a woman who has had many, many misfortunes in her life, from childhood to adulthood. And yet she has not let it embitter her. She greets the world with a smile and has a kind word for everyone. She is an inspiration. I have to believe that she and people like her, lead a happier, more fulfilling life than those who rage and grumble at their fate.

By all accounts, Abraham Lincoln was a kind good-humored fellow. And yet ye was born into abject poverty. His mother died when he was nine. A failed business venture put him in debt for years. His sweetheart died. He lost elections for the legislature, for congress, for the senate. Yet somehow, he kept his spirits up and was eventually elected President of the United States. So when those big moments of life hit you over the head, try to emulate someone like Lincoln rather than those poor sods who run around going, “poor me! Poor me.”


Star Liner

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