Tell me the best moments of your life…
I found myself in town late this afternoon. I was surrounded by graduating students from the University in caps and gowns.
I picked up the latest book group choice, Life after Life by Kate Atkinson and was taken by the words featured in the headline photo.
When two or three ideas collide in my mind a story can result. I was particularly focussed on the words,
“Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’
I was recalling the many stories I had heard over the years of graduations. My local paper published many graduation photos and created an impression in my mother that to have that photo in the paper was to have climbed the summit of achievement.
I was a later comer and didn’t get mine until I was 26. I found my graduation one of the most anti-climactic events of my life, maybe it was because my two guests were unable to attend. It did feel like sheep being dipped, name after name called as you glided past the person presenting your degree, anyone watching would have found it difficult to match the name with the person.
My course had an average age of 40 something which meant we did not experience the youthful bonding that may occur with a similarly aged group.
So I thought what moments in my life gave me what they said my graduation would? I believe our lives are made of such moments and for me, they are usually spontaneous moments. Like the day the local paper photographer took my photo aged 4 with my pup at the dog show. Small as I was I felt like I won the dog show that day! Or the day aged 6 or 7 that I won junior boy champion at school, yes I was good at something. Or the first day of High school when as we all stood in the assembly hall they called out my name for the top class, I can still recall the shock, was I that clever? Or the day, after I left my Senior High school, that my old headmaster sent me my athletic certificates in which I came first in 5 races though in a dispute with the school I refused to accept.
It is in the unexpected, the spontaneous that I have experienced the best moments in life. But then that is true living for me the unplanned, the wind blowing wherever it so may choose.
g.
