The Intersection
This morning was a normal morning that began a normal day. I woke up at 5:30am as I normally do. Grabbed my iPod and headed out into the solace of the early morning hour that I love so much. Near the end of my walk, I had come to a point where I normally cut diagonally through a quiet four-way intersection. I’ve done this many times without thought; however, for some reason, on this normal day, I stopped right in the center of the intersection and looked east, then west, then north and finally south. As I stood there for a few moments, almost stunned, I looked again in all the four directions and the realization struck me that I had the freedom to go in any of those directions that I wanted. All I needed to do was pick a direction and just walk and whatever lay ahead down at the end of that road, whatever was waiting for me down there is… well… down there. “Meant to be”, after all, is an illusion.
I can say, with some degree of certainty that the probability of anything spectacular, or even horrible for that matter, at the termination points of any of those directions was pretty low. But I had a sense of passion for living in that moment, just by standing there as long as I did, savoring that sense of freedom I felt I had as I looked up and down each street. All the while I was embracing the absurdity and rebelling against it at the same time since I knew that any direction I took would be me just walking up the street and conversely holding the belief that this universe is completely unreasonable and anything could happen.
Because I embraced that moment fully, I grew genuinely excited as to what was going to happen next. So I chose west… the direction home. And what happened? Exactly the same thing that happens every other normal morning that begins every other normal day. Isn’t that spectacular?
