Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.
–Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Becoming: part 1
Big moments can be tricky. Oh, some of them are obvious: weddings, funerals, first times. Most of them sneak up on you though. You don’t know how important the moment is until much later. Or at all.
Running into my Italian professor at the library one afternoon in college changed the whole course of my life. He asked which country I was going to spend my year abroad in. I was a language major–of course I was going abroad. The thing is, the deadline to sign up was that day. I didn’t have the money to go, so I was not going anywhere. If I hadn’t run into Professor Hatzantonis at that very moment, if he hadn’t physically marched me down the street and stood over me while I filled out the application, if he hadn’t made me write a check to pay the deposit with money I didn’t even have in my checking account…
I wouldn’t have gone. Not that year. Maybe not ever.
The entire course of my life really was altered by a chance encounter at the library. It only happened because I waited until the last minute to research a paper.
What would have happened if I had done my research in a more timely manner? Who knows. The book of my life could have been rewritten completely. Maybe I’d have fallen in love and married a missionary and had 10 kids. Maybe I’d have been sexually assaulted leaving a bar and committed suicide because I couldn’t cope with it. Maybe I’d have actually listened to the State Department recruiters and used my language skills for evil. Maybe I’d have become a coke addict. I will never know. No one can.
Usually you can’t pin it down, but think how many things have to align in just the right way for anything to happen. Think how unlikely it is for a car to crash into you. If you stop to talk to someone, or go back in the house because you forgot your car keys, that would be just enough of a delay to keep someone from running into your car at the precise moment it would have to happen. Maybe the crash would have paralysed you or killed you. Or them.
Big moments can seem so small at the time. Any tiny thing, every tiny thing adds up to things happening the way they do. Change one thing, and everything turns.
The butterfly effect, right?
Stop and tie your shoe, and a guy crosses the street without seeing you. He might have run into you, started talking and fallen in love with you. Or he might have thrown you into the back of his van, taken you somewhere secluded and tortured you. Tying a shoe doesn’t seem like a big deal until it is.
You don’t know that someone has said their last words to you until time passes. You don’t know that someone isn’t coming back until they don’t. It’s why it is so important to try to be kind. If you die suddenly, do you want your last words to someone you care about to be “you are such a dick?”
You can’t control most of the big moments. You don’t even know what they are. You can control how you act and what to say to people. You can do your best to not leave someone with a big moment that leaves them sadder for having interacted with you.
I am not perfect. If someone pushes me, I will probably eventually say something awful. Maybe that isn’t such a great character trait. It’s a very human one. I’m nothing if not imperfect.
I can try, though.
Or keep trying…