The Goat
an excerpt

I always thought that the intersections of my life would be clearly marked. I suppose we all think that. It is comforting to think of life’s most important moments as, well, important moments. Victory, love, and inspiration are great and beautiful things. They are also – for me at least - incredibly rare. The mundane is mundane for a reason. The ordinary is ubiquitous. It surrounds us and envelops us. You don’t marry the plain and boring girl next door because she is plain and boring; you marry her because she’s next door. The marriage continues in comfort if not earnestness. We search endlessly for the beauty that we were believe we were always meant to be defined by.

Like that girl next door, the moments of life that will eventually change and mold us are not exciting. They are not the stuff of great sagas. They are seemingly mundane. As we look past them, they crawl up next to us. We absorb them and become them. Or maybe they absorb us and become us. It is the mundane that defines us.

My life is no different. While I searched for the brass ring, a patina of the ordinary overcame me. It would take one of those brilliant moments to crack through that shell of the ordinary and open life to the spectacular. It may have never had happened if not for a goat. Not the life defining moment that I would have picked. But that’s the point.