RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

DIFFERENT VIEW OF LIFE, BECAUSE...

At one time or another, we all get into a position that we didn't expect.  It is not an accident, but it is not planned.  It just seems to happen.  We get up in the morning, get through the day until a certain hour, an then things change and we are at a different place with a different perspective than we had.  Some of these changes are powerful enough to cause radical changes in our outlook on life.  Those of us who are spiritually oriented defer the change to an all-knowing God who is the Master of the Universe.  Even then, the humanity in us still steps aside and tries to analyze the string of causes that came into play in bringing such a change about.  It is especially intriguing when it is clear that another person, just as virtuous and just as capable as we should have been the one in the order of the universe that has now become our place.  It happens more than we know because some of the changes are minor and the change that they effect is of very small consequence.  Every now and then we see our planned calendar of events for the day change.  We step aside and take what comes and we get though the day none the worse for wear...and some times even, better and in a better mood.  Those are the easy ones.  Those are the ones when we say, "Phew, somehow I dodged that bullet!"  Sometimes we don't dodge the bullet and we get home after the day and we are very grumpy and full of blame and vituperation for things and people who contributed to the discomfort.  That is still small, and the next day we get up and start all over again from scratch.  Lately, though, a big one happened to me and it changed my life.  For the better, I might add.  It is akin to having got a promotion after a fairly well-liked colleague got his walking papers.  I was the beneficiary of someone's misfortune and happened to be at the right place at the right time.  I happened to be there because of a string of events that fell into place because of a complicated ball-of-string background existence that led to my being there  in the first place.  When the situation changed and I found myself in a place that I had not foreseen, especially since I had pretty much played by the rules, I felt some remorse for the person who was on the negative end of the change.  I still think of that.  I still have to run to the spiritual side to try to understand the cold, hard truth of the whole matter.  It resembles the complex feeling that is described by psychologists when they talk about the adjustments that survivors have to make.  Somehow it feels weird to benefit from someone else's sudden change of factual life requirements.  Especially when it is clear that the change has prevented a very hotly desired outcome from happening.  It is not easy to think of how scarred the other person could be because of the appearance of a sudden fork in the road of life.  
My outlook on life has been changed in the last six or seven weeks.  Not just from the fall-out from the positive experience that fell into my life, but from the experience itself.  It is challenging.  It is also so sweet.  I pray every day that the other person has been blessed with something good along the way.  It is difficult for me to imagine what it could be, but somehow I am convinced that this is so.  I have to tell you, this is the greatest switcheroo that has ever come into my life.  I like to think that it was about time, but then I wonder about the person who was left on the other tine of the fork in the road.  I have made it a resolution to do the best I can with what was given to me so that the good that I can make happen will somehow, secretly but surely, be attributed in part to him.