Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Moment

I was asked the other day to discuss one defining moment in my life. The one moment that truly shaped who I am today. A transformational moment, if you will. It's a difficult question, and one I've been thinking about a lot lately.

We don't often meausure our lives in moments, but maybe, just maybe, we should. For life can change in an instant, sometimes in a small but powerful way, and sometimes drastically... a devastating car accident, the moment your first child is born, the decision to choose self-preservation over a life not destined for greatness, deciding to walk out the door forever or turning around and knowing for sure it is there you must stay.

Have you ever considered how differently your life might have turned out had you made even slightly different choices in those critical times? I am not one to dwell on these kinds and sorts of woulda, shoulda, coulda things, but I do believe that we are all actually constantly faced with transformational moments, only most often we go with the status quo and therefore don't recognize them as such.

I do know, however, with great certainty, that there are moments suspended in time that have, indeed, changed who I am at my core... for better, for worse, forever.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you. With one amendment: at least in my life I observed, that it was usually not so much the most critical times that changed the course of life, but the moments when I chose to be a certain type of person in the future.
Critical times are like big waves that come and you have to make decisions to deal with them. They can kill you anyway or injure seriously or make you stronger. They come and go. But the quiet moment when you decide to turn the ship East or West will have longer lasting implications.

Thanks for a good read, as always Mila.

The Cranky Princess said...

Thanks for reading.

I think, actually, we are sort of saying the same thing. My point (at least in my head ;0) was that sometimes we don't recognize exactly those moments you are describing as impactful but that we should do so more often since they have the capacity to change our lives just as much, if not more, as the critical ones we do, in fact, see and feel and ponder and reflect upon and ultimately acknowledge as life changing. This is precisely why I have trouble with the concept of transformational moments... though I fully understand that I've had a few of those, too.