Aditi Khorana

It was a second. A blink. The flap of a bird's wing, the moment it takes to say hello, or goodbye. So quickly that it made me think of all the insignificant seconds that we throw away. And all the seconds that we don't too. The seconds that we hold on to, that we return to... I considered the fact that all it takes is a second for life to completely change.

I had often thought about people who lived through strange and compelling times _ World War II, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement. These were periods that shaped people in some indelible way. I wondered how this moment would define us. I had never before believed that there was anything special about the era I was growing up in.

It made you wonder: How much of our lives was just luck or good timing, and how much was actually choice? How could it be that tiny serendipitous events could change everything? And if lucky events could change everything, could minor mishaps have the same power?

It would be a decision she made with her will, rather than with her heart, and she would pay a price for it.

People _ teachers, other students, parents _ constantly made offhand comments that didn't mean much to them, but I read something else in their words. A hidden language that told me I was different. Or maybe I was so aware of my own difference that I was just looking to be offended by other people's words.

I thought about how many elements it took to create the simplest of things - a pink sky an unusually perfect day, a happy family, a deep friendship, a moment of pure delight. I wondered, too, what it took to undo these things. It seemed to me that undoing something was far easier than creating it.

Maybe those stories did more harm than good by giving us false hope. All they did was reinforce our faith that the world was once made up almost entirely of magic or miracles. But where was that magic now, when we needed it?