One of my favorite movies is Sliding Doors. This movie isn't known for it's incredibly clever dialog or Oscar worthy acting. I love the movie because of it's premise.
Helen loses her job. As she's running to catch the train home, she drops an earring. At that point, the movie splits into two different story lines. The first is the story of her life if she catches the train. The second, she stops to pick up her earring and misses the train.
The movie is about how different her life is because of that one seemingly insignificant event.
I love thinking about things like that.
I had a Sliding Doors moment yesterday.
I went on to Athlinks to look up a race of mine. I noticed that one of my races from January of this year was missing. I went onto the race website to find out what my results were.
I'm scrolling through....and I come to the women/men 45-49, and I notice my results aren't there. I remember that Liz had recommended that I should not race initially (when I first started with her).
BUT there was another name in the results that stood out to me. Remember all my first of the year drama? All the exploding friendships?
We'll call her Beth (since I'm not sure who reads my blog anymore, and I'm a fan of Walking Dead).
Beth knew I was registered for the race. I do the race every year. We had talked about it in December.
I'd asked Beth to do the race with me in previous years. Each year, it was too far of a drive or she got sick. It's winter, stuff happens.
Yet after our argument, she knew I would be there and registered and raced.
But, I wasn't there.
There is no way that this is a coincidence.
I was wondering. I don't know what her intentions were.
But how would things have been different if I had shown up? Would it have been a step toward reconciling?
What if she had called me afterward and said, "I was hoping to see you at the race".
I thought of the movie Sliding Doors. Even those seemingly insignificant events, like skipping a race, are significant. It doesn't mean things would be better. It just means, different.
AND like the movie, sometimes things that start out badly, ending up being the best thing that could have happened to us.
