a moment that changed my life essay

SLIDE SHOW For many of us, there’s a single moment in our life when it all changed. For Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of “Eat, Pray, Love,” it was the moment when, as a baby, she overheard her parents talking and realized she wasn’t the center of the world. For Richard Ferguson, it was when his beloved dog was run over by a truck. For Mira Ptacin, it was the moment she began to run. For Kathy Ritchie, it was when she discovered that her mother had dementia.These stories are all part a beautifully written, moving new collection of essays edited by Larry Smith, the founder of Smith Magazine, about the instance when a person’s life takes a new path. “The Moment” includes contributions from well-known writers, like Pulitzer-winner Jennifer Egan, and numerous first-timers. We’ve selected six of our favorite here.I also spoke with Larry Smith over the phone about his project.What was the thinking behind “The Moment”? It was pretty much the same as Smith Magazine: Personal storytelling by a mix of regular people and professional writers and storytellers. For the last six years we’ve been putting up prompts on the site, like “tell us a story about your ex,” or “tell us about a celebrity encounter.”  Toward the end of 2006 I put up a prompt asking for six-word memoirs, and I thought it would be a one-month project. But it turned into an ongoing project, and it allowed me to revisit the theories and ideas of longer personal storytelling. After having done this site for a few years and having gone on book tours and talked to people, I learned that people had the most unbelievable story about the moment when their life changed. So we put up some prompts, and then we did some outreach to people I like.The book is a combination of famous writers and people who aren’t professional writers at all. Why the mix?We have a well-known Pulitzer-winning author in the same book as someone.
Purpose: To convey through my experience, how good and bad experiences can come from something that is life changing and the effect it has on people. How hard it can be to come to terms with a major change in a person’s life and show that taking away bad experiences is not necessarily good. When people are asked to analyse their life. For some peculiar reason they always focus on the bad experiences, leaving out all of the great times, like watching a cricket match on the television and screaming so loud that they’re soon out of breath, all the time knowing that they Probably couldn’t hear you. I once looked at my life in a very negative way, but now I look at my life with the opposite view. I remember the two days, after my fist seizure, which was at school. They seemed to last for an eternity. I’d lie awake all night and stare out the window all day, In the desperate hope that it was a one off, I didn’t have epilepsy, everything was normal, and life was fine, the way it always was. On the twenty eighth of May, my world was turned upside down, when the suspected diagnosis of epilepsy was confirmed, tears began running down my face, as those words were said, as if I knew in my heart, but was desperate to be wrong. Why me? What had I ever done to deserve this? These thoughts immediately crept into my head. At that point I thought I would cry forever, even if the tears weren’t showing. I was crying because my life had just changed forever, I was angry that I’d let it happen, but mostly I was afraid, afraid what epilepsy may mean for my future. I didn’t know whether I could still get my drivers licence, I was so terrified I would have to leave St John Ambulance. What scared me most was, I wouldn’t be able to make my dream of being an Ambulance Paramedic become reality. What made it worse was not the crying, but when I had stopped crying and blaming the world for what I.
Image Credit: Bonnie S., Fremont, CA In movies and books, people often describe a defining moment when they figure out who they are. However, I never thought it actually happened in real life. I never expected to have a “moment” of my own. When it arrived, mine was much more powerful than I could have ever imagined. During the spring of my junior year, my class watched a documentary called “The Invisible Children.” It was about three college students who take a trip to Africa and document their experience. At first the film was slightly humorous; the filmmakers clearly had no idea what they were getting into. One said at the beginning, “I don’t really know what to expect. I hope we don’t, like, die or something.” However, once the group arrived in northern Uganda, the mood changed. They learned what the consequences of a 23-year war had been for thousands of children. Many had lost family and friends, some had younger siblings who were captured by the rebel army and recruited as child soldiers, others had no home and slept in alleys too cramped for us to comprehend. There was footage of night commuters and child soldiers, many younger than me. Before long, I was sobbing. I just kept thinking, What have I been doing with my life? I couldn’t believe these things were happening, yet at the same time I knew they were. I just hadn’t been paying attention. For 17 years I was blissfully unaware in my little bubble of Salt Lake City, Utah. When the movie ended, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Later at swim practice it was hard to understand how my teammates could laugh and joke after what we had just seen. When I got home that night, I tried to tell my parents about the film, but I couldn’t get the words out. I hiccupped and choked my way through a description and what I thought I had to do now. I was able to convince my parents to donate 0 to The Invisible Children (I.