Ch. 7: So this is how it starts.
- Ch. 1: Maze Runner in Firenze? The walls are closing in on me and the eyes are watching.
- Ch. 2: Is seeing believing or do you have to believe it to see it?
- Ch. 3: If this is a game, I’m losing.
- Ch. 4: Maybe it’s time to go.
- Ch. 5: Do you believe in something greater than yourself?
- Ch. 6: This is what intuition feels like.
- Ch. 7: So this is how it starts.
They never tell you how it begins.
I blinked and I was again looking at her.
She smiled in a way that said so much without any words. The translations of it all came through to me in numbered bullet points. It may be just me, but I often think in numbered bullet points, so at least I felt that I had not lost all of my former self.
- It was over.
- I had done well.
- The WiFi would now work.
- My life would be forever changed from this moment on and that I now possessed a secret power that I would slowly come to understand, respect, and develop.
- I could have a cup of tea.
Really pleased to hear about number three at this point. Looking forward to number five as well. It was a good start to the day. I wondered how she got number three to work without my laptop?
Somehow she was reading my thoughts. Or maybe I was reading her thoughts that she was reading my thoughts. Or maybe she was just really happy for me. But I don’t think it was for number three or number five.
Her whole demeanor focused on number four. She knew that I knew, but if she knew me at all, which she somehow did at this point, she knew that I could take number three and number four in stride on my way to number five. Or at least that I could pretend that I took it all in stride. I was both calm and a volcano about to erupt.
I’m not really a big fate kind of guy. Not so much this whole morning was meant to happen and the timing and the woman and all that. At least, before I asked for WiFi I hadn’t been that kind of guy. Now I’m not sure I’m still that kind of guy.
The eyes last night. The woman on the sidewalk, the man in the middle of the street. The password, the receipt. It was all just too much. As lightly as I felt about it all, as much as part of me just wanted to get back to my laptop, my tea, and my WiFi, a feeling came up inside of me that I couldn’t ignore.
It was that feeling you have when you are overcome with emotion. Maybe it’s the birth of your child or your team winning the championship. It’s the gut thing. It gurgles up and you usually can’t stop it.
I do believe that each time that happens in your gut. When that fiery ball of whatever-it-is rolls up your body and you can’t deny it, you actually love it and you can’t reproduce it consciously, you know that you just changed something in who you are. It’s as if that rumble goes up and through you and changes something in your DNA or your cells or whatever it is that makes you who you are.
This particular morning’s fireball was coming up through my stomach and for a second, I couldn’t breathe. I gasped as it, quite literally and physically, took my breath away. I had the quickest of flashes in my mind that reminded me that I have two young boys as the flash movie was somehow again a comic of Spiderman and how he had been transformed by, was it a spider bite? I quickly went to shoo away the thought in my head when I realized, as little as I understood it, that this is exactly what just happened to me.
But that doesn’t really happen. Right? That was my thought. But while my mind was doubting, the fireball was making its way up through my body and was as real as walking by an outdoor heat lamp in the hardware store.
How would I know I had changed? What if I walked out of the cafe and my life was no different from before? What if I walked out and it wasn’t the same as before? How would I know?
As these thoughts went through my mind, I answered the question. I said, out loud, without my commanding my lips and voice to do so.
“I know.”
Then, as if to add fire to the fireball, it came into my throat and I had to swallow quickly. My eyes watered instantly. It wasn’t as if I stuck my finger went into an electrical socket, but that my whole upper body was inside of an electrical socket. It didn’t hurt, but it was there. It took me over and if there had been any question as to whether something other worldly had taken place under this cafe as if there was the slightest doubt that this was not the beginning of a life I didn’t know but was about to learn, I did something I never, ever do.
I winked.
The story continues some weeks later when our reluctant hero becomes the … Unknowing Majestic Mystic. He’s kind of clueless to his powers. See if you can help guide him along his newfound path.
