
Great Moments In Our Lives
Those moments that change our lives can come from unusual sources. In my case it was failing to know any other fans of my football team.
I’d got tickets to their last ever game at their old ground but lived more than 70 miles away. The night before I was desperate for some banter, so decided to find fans online in chat rooms. The first one I found was a girl blatantly not interested in football, but at least from the area. Ten years on, and we’re married with a baby. Both the wedding and birth were clearly momentous moments, but would never have happened without me scooping that rare ticket. We won 6-2, by the way.
Momentous occasions in life are sometimes planned, sometimes worked for, and other times completely spontaneous and fortuitous. For example, lottery winners cannot know they would ever win, but in the back of their mind that nagging, wonderful possibility is always present.
Imagine winning $20,000 a month for 20 years, and the effect that would have on every aspect of your life. For all the mansions, sports cars, holidays and champagne, the greatest moment would surely be that realisation at the start of the journey that nothing can ever be the same again, from the second that the final number is produced.
Conception, pregnancy and birth is also a lottery of course, of a different type. Statistically, according to WebMD, the odds of an average woman successfully falling pregnant on any given month is around 15-25%, but the development of the child depends on many things; the DNA of the child, the mother’s health and habits, and the level of hospital care, among other factors.
For whatever cruel reason, some couples struggle to ever have children. Their ‘great moment’, of being told that their new arrival is on the way, is probably just that little bit greater than most people’s. For example, Julia and Mark McCarthy were given odds of one in 250,000 that they could ever conceive naturally and had virtually given up on the idea.
So when the miracle unexpectedly happened, they were justifiably stunned. Mrs McCarthy told the Daily Mail: “It makes me think about other couples who are facing difficulties and heartache with fertility problems. Don’t give up hope – good things can, and do, happen.”
For young parents, every day is a milestone as the child gets older and explores life. The first word, the first steps, and the first day at school are each moments that will be frozen in time in your mind, and in the 21st century on a mobile phone or digital camera. A Photobox pictorial calendar depicting those snapshots, or a mug or print, will stop them in time in your home as well.
As we move through our lives other achievements and incidents will either achieve forgettable, bad, good or great status. Exam grades and the benefits they confer are usually nerve-wracking times, to be followed by joy or disappointment. Old-fashioned newspaper spreads on exam day usually show joyful students leaping into the air, dreaming of university or highly-paid jobs. However, what about those who fail pathetically? They are probably just as likely to recall nervously tearing open the envelope or clicking their mouse flowed by crushing disappointment. Bad news can be turned into long-term good, as shown by this Buzzfeed list of famous faces who flunked their studies or were dealt dreadful news at some point, but can now look back on it from their multi-million dollar estates and chuckle.
The first job is another potential day of joy, whether taking a role at a blue-chip giant, a local small company or as boss of your own start-up. The thrill of negotiating the interview (and sometimes telling the would-be employers where to go even if offered) in itself is exciting enough, but actually being able to tell people where you work and what you do, while picking up some dollars at the end of the month, is a thrill. Again, numerous horror stories of bad first jobs abound aplenty; this writer spent a day struggling in a microwave food factory that stayed with him forever, but countered that with brilliant first days in newspaper and marketing offices.
Birthdays are another example of potentially great days, for people of all ages. Children’s parties may be lavish, exciting affairs, sometimes costing thousands of dollars to put together. You’d better believe that a party for a five-year-old costing $5,000 is going to be something to remember, and these shows of wealth would seem to be more commonplace. But are any of these displays of opulence more worthy of committing to memory than parties such as that thrown by teens survivors who askes for donations for a hospital that saved their lives, surprise parties attended by relations who live several thousand miles away, or hilarious fancy dress parties where your gran dresses up as a Disney character?
For shows of love, creativity, and fun involving family and friends, wedding days are also hard to top. Of course one has to come into contact with one’s spouse-from-the-future first, and not everyone can be lucky enough to stumble into them in a chatroom or Tinder (as a matter of interest, 30% of Tinder users are already married). ‘How I met my partner’ does sound like a dreadful Jennifer Aniston rom-com, but the direction that brings people together is not always a straight arrow. For evidence, take a stroll through these twelve Buzzfeed stories which include a woman pursuing a man for his beard, a couple randomly seated together in a plane – and a duo who met at an autopsy.
The random nature of these stories shows that we cannot predict or plan the journey of our life, and when or where the key memories of our life will take place. A 40 year-old person has lived for just over 14,600 days, but can probably only vividly recall memories from a few hundred of them, if that.
That’s a lot of undercard fodder in-between the main events, plenty of starters as prep for the feasts; thousands of days where very little happens, but all worth it for the days where something fantastic does.