What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

You plod along through life fulfilling your personal multitudes of responsibilities – you work, you run errands, you go home and work some more – maybe even work out for your own physical good instead of for everyone else’s demands,  you chill out in front of a boob tube or in a book, you go to sleep,  then you get up the next day and do it all again. On occasion when you can fit it into either your schedule or your energy level…or BOTH… you schedule a few hours for dinner or lunch, or even an entire day for some random recreation with friends you don’t have time to see NEARLY as much as you would like. Of course, you will PAY for that recreation time with extra hours of make-up time in the errand and work category, either before or after your digression from responsibility, but it seems worth the sacrifice…at least sometimes.

In quiet moments, you sometimes contemplate the possibilities for your future, which really don’t look so promising from your present vantage point. You realize your life isn’t exactly as you had once hoped it would be, but it is as it should be and you’ve learned to accept it.

Every now and then some sappy chick flick comes on the cable channel you happened to leave your TV on while you’re working on your laptop, or dusting and cleaning house or trying to juggle your bills and bank account, or sometimes while you’re just lying on the sofa being a slug for no special reason at all other than that you are convinced that you have earned the privilege to be a slug when you damn well feel like being one. You try not to get involved in the sappy love story on the TV because you’ve been around the block enough times to know that crap like that just doesn’t happen in real life. MEN like that just don’t happen in real life. And yet, in the closing scenes, you find yourself foolishly wondering, “Why can’t that happen to ME?” You shrug and chuckle at your own silliness in even considering such a foolish question – you remind yourself that such things just don’t happen in real life, to real people, like you. Then you get up and get back to work and to minding the responsibilities that you’ve shamefully neglected for 2 hours while indulging in some absurd female fantasy.

And then one day when you least expect it – not just because you’ve lost all hope for expecting it but also because you don’t even feel deserving to hope for it anymore – one day when you least expect it but need it most, but are far too proud to ever ADMIT that you need it – one day when you least expect it...

...something magical happens…