By Rami Abdo
A critical
moment is one such that it entails a point in time where a possible ‘effect’ to
take place does so purely and only by and because of the means which lies
within your own possession, and according to your own judgment and decision. A
failure to act upon the cause, and thus create the ‘effect’, leads irreversibly
to the failure and passing of that said critical moment. Take note that it is
another matter if a delay or hesitation on your part causes ‘the passing’, and
if you then, at a later point, decide to act / choose on the specifications of
the lost moment, because in actuality you are acting / choosing on a completely
new critical moment, with rules alter to those of the previous moment which has
been lost in time due to that delay / hesitation.
Exemplifying
the definition certainly requires taking the classical examples of critical
moments, namely those of the ‘once in a lifetime career opportunity’ when one
is handed the ‘perfect job’ on a silver platter and the other being the
males/females only chance of securing a romantic relationship (possibly the
most passionate of their lives) by making ‘the’ move on the male/female of
their dreams. Let’s take each in its own format for lucidity and colourful
literal illustration.
Concerning
the former, the said person is currently working desperately to secure
financial troubles. It is needless to expound further on what these may be, for
in this day and age these troubles can be vampiric and destructive, to say the
least, so let’s leave it at that. Continuing, the person is holding (barely) a
minimum wage job in a minimum-size facility, dreading the brain-cell-melting
routine of work as he/she only survives due to the increasingly overwhelming
weekly sensation that after every five weekdays there is a weekend. The only
substance that keeps this person alive is family, relatives, and home, which is
where the heart is of course. And thus the routine is only broken by occasional
family picnics, holidays and gossip, which as any quick-witted reader would
notice, becomes a routine in itself.
Then one
day, as the person mulls over a wasted life, a letter arrives from a global
company from a global city, offering a global career opportunity with a global
salary and global perks to boot. Hence a critical moment has shone upon said
person. It is now within their own choosing, (here enters the tormenting
soul-ripping sleepless nights of indecision), on whether to pass up the offer
with an unsure wave of the hand and an even more-so unsure comment such as;
“oh, its not for me, all that big city life, all that adjusting”, or to
violently pack their possessions, spouse, kids and family dog into every
crevice of their station wagon and ride of into the new beginning, without so
much as a “goodbye” to their milkman (door-to-door milkmen are an extinct
species in global cities). The said person establishes themselves into a
prominent position, purchases all they ever wanted in life (assuming it can be
bought), and moves up at least two notches in Maslows ‘Heirarchy of needs
pyramid’, which they learnt so well in college and finally put to good use. The
person praises themselves for snatching life by the…(insert whatever you feel
is appropriate) and lives as their dreams wanted them to live.
Or will this
drastic change inevitably corrupt their once simple hearts, break up their
families and leave them to rot in their single-room condos with their fat
paychecks that they have no idea what to do with (except pay a substantial
chunk to alimony and child support). It is those moments when they reflect back
at that critical moment, when said person was clutching tightly to that letter
sent by global corporation from global city, and said person wishes he/she had
shred said letter into a thousand particles and sent them burning into the
fiery pits from whence they came, instead of assuming that any life other than
theirs would be better.
The latter scenario certainly fits into a
more serendipitous, Hollywoody movie, happy-ending kind of moment, but since
this is the real world: brutal, heart-wrenching regret will (regretfully) take
the place of happy endings that we so often see. Just to set the settings on
the movie-ending scene, what usually happens is the hero / heroine finds the
perfect lover somewhere in the beginning of the movie, they prove their love
somewhere midway, only to break apart because of: infidelity / lies about the past / evil
mutated bad guy kidnapping one of them. There usually follows a time of sadness
(with soppy music to boot) where the lonesome hero / heroine reflect on all the
good times they had together while walking head-down along a beach in the
sunset. At this point near the ending, they realize that their love for each
other is too strong to be cracked over a few insignificant differences (or the
evil baddy is annihilated in some gruesome manner), resulting with the two
passionately hugging and kissing at the airport when one was about to leave the
country for good before the other decided to race in time to stop the plane
departing (what ever happens to all that airport traffic??).
That was a Hollywood critical moment as far
as lost loves are concerned. In real life it is much more delicate than that,
so delicate in fact, that most of the times we hardly notice a critical moment
has come and gone, setting of a chain reaction that could mean the end of a
possibly happily-ever-after relationship, sometimes even before it begins! To
state an example, let me use a man as the subject, only because it is usually
expected of the man to do the first move (a notion I don’t approve of but what
the hell, that’s wholly another matter). The man is trotting along a busy
shopping street, minding his own business, when he accidentally bumps into a
woman coming around the corner, spilling the contents of her shopping bag. With
apologetic smiles he offers to help, and in the process discovers from the
spilt items some common hobby / interest he shares with the woman. This could
be anything from an album of the Beatles to diving gear or matchbox cars.
Before he realizes it he has begun a sporadic
conversation with this woman who he is finding increasingly attractive (and
vice versa) by the nanosecond. They both talk to each other for ten minutes as
if they are perfectly suitable for each other (and perhaps they are, isn’t that
the point), laughing sincerely at one another’s jokes and finding more and more
areas of common interest. Then it happens. They both run out of things to say
because they are either too nervous or not close enough (yet) to expand further
into more intimate subjects. The woman’s eyes dart from her bag to the end of
the street, where her car is parked. The man shuffles nervously, sweating
profusely, unable to look at any object higher than his fidgety feet. Inevitably,
this is what usually ensues: Both vaguely comment, at the same time, something
in the lines of; / “so anyway I gotta
go” / “well I’ll see you around” / “meters
gonna run out for my parked car” while both point randomly in opposite
directions. With one last moment of hesitation to be the only memory of their
ten-minute relationship, they reluctantly part their ways, both having yearned
for the same thing but both too shy to grasp it. Of course, to add further
spice to the drama, the man looks back when he’s ten meters away but views only
her back, and she does the very same thing a moment later, after he’d already
turned back disappointed and continued walking away. They never see each other
again, and the critical moment is gone. What often follows such lost moments is
the man tearing his hair out as he expels his mournful regret to anyone who
would listen on how he let what possibly could have been the future mother of
his children get away from his clutches, purely on the (now seemingly idiotic)
grounds of being too shy to ask for her number or to offer to continue the
conversation at a café somewhere. She too will feel the loss, lamenting to her
friends on what could have been, and maybe even bang her head a few times for
bowing down to the shallow notion that he was supposed to make the first move,
irrevocably suffering as much as he will.
The only consolation to a lost critical
moment is the resolute guarantee from the subject of the losing end that he/she
has learned their lesson and will never let it ever happen again as long as
they live. To this I say, that it is true, as humans we have the capacity to
learn from our mistakes, but nevertheless we seem to repeat them, merely owing
to the sake of clarity for our fickle assurance. It is a condition akin to a mongrel
which, on going to cross the street, gets run over and breaks a leg. Then,
unsure on whether it was the car, the street, or its clouded imagination that
attributed to its leg currently protruding at an awkward angle, proceeds to
make sure by crossing a different street, and predictably getting another leg
broken. Now it is sure it’s not the street, for it had just crossed a different
street, but is still left flummoxed over whether it is the car or it’s
imagination to blame. And so, when the conditions are ripe once more, it cannot
help but walk (or more likely crawl) into a street once more, whereupon with
the squeal of tires and the crack of bone it is now positive that the car is the
cause of all these limb-dentations. But by then of course it is too late.
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