Not So Fast: You Never Know

In September of 2007, I met a boy at a bar. I took this simple meeting, this chance encounter, and I attached a heavy weight to its circumference. I seared it into my brain, quite convinced that this encounter would steer the course of my life, if only for awhile.

A week later, a woman sat down at the table where I was sitting. Gravity propelled our introductions and I sat in quiet awe, grateful to experience this one solitary moment. I catalogued it along with the other random moments of my existence. That’s what it was to me – powerful and random, with little chance of ever being revisited.

Great moments rarely are revisited. That should have been Clue Number One as a boy stood before me, grinning stupidly, allowing me to be greater than I actually was, just for that one brief moment.

Even things of power fizzle out eventually. For all the chaos and buildup, that single great moment never amounted to more than a series of slip-ups and heartaches. And now I struggle to find what the significance of any of it was – why it was a necessary paper weight in my life.

The woman from this other chance encounter meeting – her story reached a different fate. It took months for the criss-cross to occur, for the dead halt and moment of recognition. But gradually, it became clear. As random as that moment had been – as much of an afterthought as it was – it was the single, great moment that changed everything. Not the silly moment with the boy in the bar. Things are never quite as we think they are.

In October of 2007, I met a woman who exhibited such kindness and warmth, it made me like her as a person as much I liked the words that she wrote on the pages. And since that insanely chance encounter, though I’m not certain what I did to deserve it, she has made it a point of taking me under her wing, of helping me, of encouraging me.

And as a result, nothing will ever be the same.

Which is so funny, because I had no idea that that was my moment.

It’s so easy to give up on people, isn’t it? Just ask someone who knew me well – it was easy for him to get up and walk away. But this woman, this stranger, has never once turned her back on me. Never given up on me. Never allowed me even a nano-second of doubt or hesitation.

For whatever reason – and I really don’t know what the reason is – she knows I can do it. And for whatever reason, this forces me to believe it too.

Trust me when I say that there are so many great moments to come.

And when they do, I won’t have a boy in a bar to thank. I'll have a thoughtful stranger, now a friend, who will forever be my teacher.