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One Moment
Bridges can be leaped from, or crossed. The fog that dark evening absorbed the waves sound and light shared, returning muffles from over that way, and soft glows from over there. The space immediately around him was simply a cloud. The even row of glows ahead was the only indicator of the bridge’s location he walked toward. He stepped onto the bridge. The streetlights transformed the fog, converting the bridge into a walkway of liquid light. The distance he could see varied with the fog’s tide. The night was still save for the muffled sound of the water below. The fog moved. Suddenly he could see the railing along the side of the bridge, and there, someone looking down at the water. The fog moved again just as suddenly and he could see the side no more. “Good evening,” he called out. There was no answer. He stopped walking to listen, and heard a scraping sound come from the same direction. “Are you alright over there?” He heard a woman begin to cry and walked to her. “Don’t try to stop me!” she said as he approached close enough they could see one another. He halted. “Stop you?” he asked. “From?” She fell to her knees and began sobbing. He rushed to her side. He knelt, touched her shoulder and asked, “What’s wrong?” She leaned into him and he responded, wrapping his arms around her as she needed. Her body shook and he held it as solidly as he could. The fog hid them away as she cried into the touch that removed her from aloneness. “Tell me,” he said simply as he continued to hold her. “Why do you care?” She pushed away and regretted losing the touch immediately. He looked toward one end of the bridge, then the other. Neither side was visible through the immovable cloud they sat knelt in. “If not me… who?” “Now tell me,” the Gift commanded her using his lips. “My life… it’s gone,” she started slowly. “How so?” he asked. “Bad decisions… mistakes…” “We all have those,” he said. “Not like mine. I ran away from home when I was 16. I ended up…” She started to sob again. He paused, resisting the urge to comfort her with either words or touch. “I became a drug addict,” she said finally. “And a prostitute.” He looked her over. She was conservatively dressed, maybe approaching 30. Nothing about the woman suggested she was either of these things. He said so. “Five years ago I reached rock bottom. I woke up in a hospital and was told they found me in an alley… naked… near dead.” She turned from him and looked out over the side of the bridge. Into the night and the mist that rendered the view invisible. “I got help. Now I work as a secretary — administrative assistant.” She smiled ruefully. “I would never go back… to what I was.” He touched her shoulder. She turned to face to him. “It sounds like you’ve gotten past this… so why are you here?” he asked. “I live each day with the fear that my past will be found out. That people I know now who see me every day… like me even… will find out I’m a… find out what I did, what I was.” He nodded his understanding. “I met a man at work… David. He cares about me and I about him. He wants us to get married.” “And you?” “Oh God yes. I love this man more than life. But… he doesn’t know about my past… if he did…” “He would no longer love you?” he asked her as she began to sob again. “How could he? So what can I do? If I tell him — I lose him… I can’t bear that. If I don’t tell him… it’s dishonest. What kind of way is that to begin a marriage?” “How long have you known David?” “Nearly three years now.” “He thinks enough of you to ask you to marry him. Why do you think that telling him about your past would change that?” “I know him. I know how he feels about drugs,. He’s very religious and I know he’d freak… to find out I’d been… a whore.” He let her cry. “If only I could go back and change things,” she sighed. There was no cliché involved with her words, he knew. They echoed his own thoughts. No going back. No second chances. It was not just his regret — it was who he was. A life of trying to move away from what had happened. Running from the judgments that would come again and again. He could not escape himself, and did not want to. He was not his mistakes. He was a fugitive from his mistakes. Mistakes made years ago. He understood her more than she knew. He asked her softly, “So why are you here?” “Mister… I came here to jump.” She paused, waiting for his inevitable reaction. He said nothing. The fog parted some then — leaving a void mimicking the void he left by not responding. His mistakes had devastated others, and disintegrated what his life had been. But it had not destroyed who and what he was. He’d contemplated destroying himself many times. What stopped him was that he had no wish to destroy what he was. He wanted only to destroy his past. It was no different than her story. She overcame her addiction. She’d become successful — attracted a person who cared enough for her to want to spend his life with her. Yet here she was, on this bridge, shrouded in cloud, contemplating self–destruction. Doing so would not destroy her past, it would confirm her past. Unable to bear the emptiness she went on. “But I couldn’t… I can’t.” The tide of fog rolled back in and they were enveloped once more. “What are you afraid of?” asked the Gift through his mouth. “What it will do to David… me dying…” She turned again to look out over the river. The Gift stepped forward and the man became the observer again. It touched her with his hand and she turned to face it. In her eyes he could see his own fears and indecision. Ending life seemed the only way out for her. As it had for him. “The future is not the past,” it stated simply. “Each moment we stand in is the present — the past slipping behind — the future ahead. You cannot go back and change what has slipped away.” The observer listened as the Gift explained the simplicity of choice. He’d heard it before of course. It never failed to startle him when he heard it again. “I know,” she admitted. “Some people carry the past with them like phantom luggage. They feel the need to do over what has already occurred… only ‘differently’. So they try and make their present as much like the past as they can. The present they create so resembles the past that they make the same mistakes.” “They say history repeats itself,” she said in understanding. “You must understand the present, the Now. Set aside thoughts that the future will be like the past. The present is thought of as a moment in time. That’s true of course, but it is much more than that. The failure to see what the Now truly is creates the saying you quote.” “I don’t understand,” she said in the same words he had used himself and found himself nearly lip-synching now. “The Now is choice. Each moment of Now is an opportunity to decide. The opportunity is seldom recognized.” “Decide… what?” she asked. “The future. If you do not decide, the phantom past makes choices for you and your future comes exactly as before.” “And history repeats itself?” “Most likely,” interjected the observer. “Look at the Now you were just in. You were ready to jump — to run away — escape. If you decided to go through with it — how would it be any different than the reasons that brought you here?” He could see that she understood. “You wish that you could see what will happen in the future,” the Gift spoke again. “Anyone can.” “What?” she grabbed at the hook. “The future is the result of the choices you make in the Now. No more. No less. You already know this, you just have not noticed it. Five years ago — in that Now — you made the decision to change your life. The very moment you did… your future changed. A future that brought David to you. Here — in this Now, on this bridge — you chose not to jump. You saw the future. The future you would leave behind if you did.” “Yes” she agreed readily. “But I don’t see the future that will happen because I didn’t.” “That is because you need to make more choices as the Now continually arrives. If you choose to move forward, then it is certain that you will.” The observer watched the Gift work in her. The simplicity of the Now charged across her brain and lit her eyes. He could see her weighing the logic, as he himself had, looking for reasons that this could not be so. The Future was becoming hers. There was one more desperate attempt the Past had to make, to defend itself from death. “That’s easy for you to say,” it told the observer through her lips. The Past snarled at him inside his brain — for being a tool of that which would destroy it. His own Past confronted him. “You are a demon,” it hissed. “You must pay for your errors. It is YOU who should be jumping!” “It isn’t easy for me at all,” responded the observer to the woman as he fought his own Past. “But I make my choices Now. I cannot change my past. It haunts me at this moment — in this Now. I’ve chosen to leave my mistakes. Not to bury them away as if they didn’t happen… I simply choose not to carry them forward.” “Go home now and do the same,” commanded the Gift. She looked at him, through him, for a long moment. “How can I thank you?” “You already have,” the observer replied truthfully. She walked away toward the same side of the bridge he intended to travel. He watched until he could see her no more through the fog. She did not look back. He stood in the middle of the bridge Now and stared out over the river. The Past lurched at him again. It called up from under the bridge. “You — of all people — have no RIGHT to suggest to others how to live. You yourself are not fit to live!” The Gift protected him. “No Past, it is you that have no right to live. You cause people to rise against one another, to recreate the misery of an ugly Past as though change is impossible. Change is possible. Every moment, except moments past. You are dead — no matter how loudly you and your believers scream vile accusations. Be gone, foul judge! You no longer exist.” “I’ll be back!” the Past lied from under the bridge. At that moment the observer chose to move forward and cross the bridge toward the next moment of choice. The cloud lifted and let the stars be seen. Now. Decide. |