The Next Page

As a child, I could disappear into a book.

Not just read a little, but disappear. So deeply that the world around me stopped existing. My hearing loss helped. Where others were distracted by sound, I was completely inside the story.

Later I discovered that life has something in common with a book. You cannot jump to page 247 to see whether everything turns out all right. You cannot read the final chapter first just to reassure yourself.

The only way to find out is to keep reading.

The most beautiful things in my life were rarely things I saw coming. Not photography. Not a marathon. Not the people I met. Even the conversations about planning, dashboards and processes could never have been predicted by the boy I once was.

They were simply waiting on a later page.

Perhaps that is what trust is.