What has been the most significant catalyst in your life?
Can you think of a single event that has tilted your life in a different direction? (Free trip to Oodnadatta if it was something insignificant that you didn't notice at the time.)
Sometimes they're tiny, Pearl. One night Mrs Didge and I went for a walk, found a sign in a shop window announcing a new soccer club, and signed the kids up. That led to new friendships, new interests, new sports, and got me involved in writing. All those things prompted action into other areas and our lives expanded.
You never know when a chance encounter will take you somewhere unexpected.
In Mary Stewart's trilogy she had Merlin say, "If you put yourself in the way of the gods, magic can happen." That may be a little colourful but it's nothing but the truth.
Sometimes they're so slight they slip through without us noticing. But they shunt us in a different direction and our lives change.
Toward the end of 1978 I started a course that meant I had to catch an earlier train than usual. A few weeks later a road bridge collapsed on my normal train killing 83 people, the majority of them in my normal carriage. That was certainly a catalyst of sorts. Without that course I probably wouldn't be here today.
For sure. I just can't think of any big ones like that and not sure I had any of that magnitude that would cause pause to think about. Just a steady flow of slight ones that kinda go by unnoticed.
Pearl 