Telling the events from the developments

Hurricane Katrina (source)

“If that doctor’s right, Nonc’s dad is going to die for sure this time. But the truth is, it’s just an event. Life’s full of events—they occur and you adjust, you roll and move on. But at some point, like when your girlfriend Marnie tells you she’s pregnant, you realize that some events are actually developments. You realize there’s a big plan out there you know nothing about, and a development is a first step in that new direction. Somebody drops a kid in your lap—that’s a development, you’ve just been clued in. Your ex-old lady disappears—you can’t shrug that off. It’s a serious development. Sometimes things seem like big-time developments—you get your wages garnished, your old man takes your car when he leaves town, you get evicted, your possessions get seized—but in time you adjust, you find a new way and you realize they didn’t throw you off course, they didn’t change you. They were just events. The truth is, the hurricane didn’t change Nonc’s life one bit. Neither will the death of his father. The tricky part, Nonc has figured out, is telling the difference between the two.”

(Hurricanes Anonymous)

Adam Johnson - Fortune smiles, stories (Random House-2015)