Once there was a boy with a normal life. For awhile everything continued on its normal course, he grew older in a regular way, he found work to do and people to live close to. It was a reasonable life and he didn’t want for anything. A million lives he could live passing by like cars in the night. It didn’t occur to him that these could be his. He wasn’t oblivious, in fact he was clever and resourceful. Its just that he was busy so his awareness went into his friends, family and work. Usually he felt as if a movie after a long day of work was life enough for him, movies were so realistic after all and he needed to rest his tired brain.

He woke up early with enough time to eat and get to work but there was no excess. He liked it that way, and over the years he had found it was easier if he had an efficient routine. He enjoyed his coffee and the talkative radio hosts. It wasn’t hard to get lost in work and by the time he got to bed in the evening he felt thoroughly spent. Nothing was wrong and he had no complaints.

One morning he woke before everyone else but before he fell back to sleep like he had always done in the past he heard a strange sound. It wasn’t his alarm like he was used to, he had been woken up by his alarm every morning that week. As far as he could remember the whole month was the same. He was so surprised that he stood up, pulled on his carpet slippers and walked into the kitchen where the sound seemed to be coming from. But when he reached the kitchen it seemed to be coming from somewhere further away, he followed the sound out onto the street. Normally he would have been far too self conscious to walk out to the street without his work costume, or at least his leisure wear but the sound was rattling at a piece of his mind that he wasn’t normally aware of. It was reminding him of something he heard a long time ago, long before he donned a suit and tie, something he had heard even before being given his first phone. As he stood in the street looking around for the source of the noise he suddenly heard it, it was silence. But more than silence, it was space, like an emptiness that wasn’t filled yet. A piece of time without needs, or desires. He heard this space like a sound even though it had no physical presence, it was so blaringly loud to this man because it was so foreign to him. It was like seeing the one frame in color in the entire black and white film. A moment was before him, unplanned, no routine to guide him and all 360 degrees of choice were within his grasp like he hadn’t felt in years. He didn’t Have to do anything, he Could do anything.

He stood in silence unsure of how to act. He took in his surroundings like he hadn’t done since he was much younger, he spotted what he was looking for: a good climbing tree. He was just about to take the four long strides to the tree when he heard his alarm go off in the distant room. It snapped him out of his reverie as if he had woken up a second time, only this time it was to a very familiar life. He knew he would be late if he didn’t return indoors.

He walked back inside to make his cup of coffee and fry two eggs in the fifteen minutes he always planned for breakfast before work. The moment he had experienced minutes before was lost in the routine, its impact dulled until it was only a flea holding on for dear life.
Even A flea can cause quite an impact on the right animals skin.

Maybe it was the tiny moment still holding onto the back of his mind or maybe it was just a random choice among the multitude of any persons day, whatever it was, he chose to go a different way to work that way. He was ten minutes late to work that morning, he had stopped on the tallest hill between him and his work to watch the sky change colors.
No one noticed he arrived to work late and no one noticed the difference in his eyes.
The real beginnings are rarely noticed.