Pivotal moment

We never see them at the time and we never see them coming, those pivotal moments.  Sometimes it takes years for us to realise what just happened, the significance, that moment.

When was your last pivotal moment?  When was mine?  When will the next be.  It's one of the odd vagaries of life, the pivotal moment, one of the things you can't predict but yet one which memory cannot bring back either, not without some serious mulling over of Stuff.

Is your life what you want it to be?  Stepping back, is it, is it really, is this existence the result of conscious choices.  If you stepped back, just a mini step and saw yourself through the eyes of, well you, but younger, or older, is this it, is this the life you want to lead? You have choices you know, you don't have to await that pivotal moment where chance takes you one way or the other, and because pivotal moments are all bound up in memory, you can change them anyway, make them into something else, lessen their impact.

I suspect as I get older and things dull, things aren't as bright or as shiny or as important as they once were, perhaps pivotal moments lessen in frequency, perhaps because I now have more conscious control, I accept chance but don't always believe in its influence over the smaller things in life. There are many things I can't change, those exert that pivotal influence.  But most things I can affect, I'm not a victim accepting her unwitting fate.  If this isn't the life I want to lead then I know, with an absoluteness of knowledge, I know that I can change it. I might not be able to immediately create the life I want to lead, but I can move away from a life I don't want to lead.  All it takes is recognition of that fact.  Maybe that recognition is in itself a pivotal moment, but I don't think so.

Pivotal moments include a walk in the pouring rain with raindrops disguising the tears coursing down my face, and the action of walking side by side hiding the face to face recognition of the tears.  It was a long time ago, crossing the bridge over the M11 but it was a bargain I made with life.  And I lost.