Crystal Blog

Last night, dear friend Kara and I sat out on her porch with a really good bottle of red wine between us. It was the perfect weather for a porch night. The temperature was perfect, the humidity wasn’t terribly high, and the wind was non-existent. There we sat, feet up on the railing and a glass in hand—each of us with an adorable Chihuahua (that’s a hard one to spell!) in our laps. We were discussing the day, the outlook for the week, and importantly, our plans for the long weekend. We were meandering thoughts of life and love and work and happiness as we usually do. And then, she made this comment: “I wish I had a crystal ball that I could look into to see how everything turns out.”

I believe my next line was: “Actually, I’m not sure I would want to know—what if I wasn’t happy?”

And what if I wasn’t? For that brief moment in time that the ball let me see—what if I was a crumpled mess on the couch surrounded by Kleenex, wine bottles and Ben and Jerry’s with greasy hair and smudged makeup? Certainly that one moment of clarity wouldn’t be enough to make me dread my future, would it? What if I was on that couch because I had just broken up with someone I had spent several happy months/years with?…Maybe I need to see a week at a time to figure out if I would really want to know what the future holds in store for me…even then, that week could be miniscule in comparison to how I felt during that entire month. Or what if that month was one bad month in a year of happy months? What if that year was a bad year in comparison to a decade of good ones? And what if it wasn’t? What if that year was just as dreadful as the 9 that came before it? What would you have to look forward to? Wouldn’t your dreams dissipate in the now if you knew of their premature demise? What would you do for the next several years in the meantime?

How much would I actually need to see before I felt comfortable taking a glimpse my future? I am not finding it very easy to actually pick a set amount of time—a time I would be comfortable seeing...it’s a scary thought, isn’t it? Would you look?

I think, over all, I’ll just hold tightly to my hope and when the long grey-haired red and purple clad jingling gypsy woman walks by offering that glimpse, I’ll save my ten bucks…