Thinky thoughts and a meme I'm starting

[piplover]

So, still no job, and I'm going slightly crazy with nothing to really do.  You all get to benefit from the hours and hours of thoughts I've been pondering.  Aren't you lucky?    Never done this before, but I thought I would start a meme.  Is this how one goes about starting a meme?  I have no clue.  Perhaps it is just idle curiosity,  you be the judge.  Looking forward to what you all have to say. 



Have you ever had a moment in your life when you could feel that everything was about to change?  Not something momentous, like 9/11, when the world shifted under our feet, but a single moment or thought that effected only you, when there was no doubt in your mind that everything you knew, everything you had experienced, was leading up to that time and place?


I've experienced this twice in my life.  The first time, and the one that will forever be ingrained in my heart and head, is when I decided to join the Army.  I had been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to join the Air Force for several weeks.  The recruiter was never in his office, my weight was off, everything was conspiring against me.  I had just come back from one such attempt, bitterly frustrated with my life and how things were going.  I pulled into my parking space, turned off the truck, and then sat there for a moment, contemplating my life.  

I was working part time at a Big Lots as a cashier, couldn't afford college, and was living with my dad who had suffered a stroke several months earlier.  I was, in effect, going nowhere fast, and as I sat in that truck, the engine pinging in the cold air of January, I could feel the weight of all my decisions settling on my shoulders.  I could see the "what ifs" and the "should have beens", everything that I had lived through and would yet experience.  It was as if my whole life had been leading up to me sitting in that parking lot, debating if it was worth it to start the truck again and drive all the way back out to the recruiters to try and talk to someone who wasn't Air Force.  

When I turned the key and started the engine again, it was honestly like I could feel myself being steered in the right direction, like a neon sign saying, "Yes, this is the choice that will change your life forever."  

And you know what?  It really did. 

I won't go into my second experience, not now anyway, because it was extremely profound and religious.  But I have to wonder, am I the only one who has ever felt the world change around them in a single moment?  

Comments

[shirebound]

That was interesting to read.

It's 4:30 a.m. and I have to drag myself out of bed and to the office, but one moment that comes to mind is during the winter of 1978/79, which was very cold and brutal. I was 22 years old. I remember looking out the window of where I worked in Philadelphia and thinking, "I wonder if there's a warmer place to live?" Eight months later I had moved to San Diego, where I've been happy for 30 years.

*hugs you*

[piplover.livejournal.com]

*Hugs you back*

Thank you for sharing, hon. Isn't it amazing how such a small moment in time can change the rest of our lives?

[bronwynferchdai.livejournal.com]

In my junior year of college (so, 2001-2002) I stood up in front of a class full of high school students for the first time and stumbled my way through a lesson on Ohm's Law. And I thought "Yes, this is what I'm going to do with my life."

Two years later, I wrote a throwaway paper for a graduate class declaring that I'd rather teach teenage boys than teenage girls.

In early 2007, I got a job offer from a very prestigious private boys' school to teach physics (and forensic science) and I walked in the first day and said "Yup, I could stay here for the next 20 years."

And still the moment that changed my life the most was when I started attending my new church. Because going there could affect my job, makes my mother nervous, causes people to question my identity and squarely drops me in the middle of a hot-button issue in our society. But standing there with my 4-month-old goddaughter on my hip I realized that I wasn't going to hide because this is who I am and this is what I want and this is what's right.
Peace, love and frogs,
Bronwyn

[piplover.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you have the courage to follow your heart and practice your faith in a manner and place that makes you feel so comfortable. I truly think that there are just moments in our lives that define us, that we can look back on and say, "Yes, this is where it started."