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The Dark Gift--Kent Nerburn
The look on her face was one of numb disbelief. "It can't be," she says. "Why me? Why now?"
"It's not as bad as you're making it out to be," I said to my good friend Alex, as she sat there staring vacantly at the heavy cast on her leg. One moment she was running about, preparing for college, worrying about books, her car and which classes to take. Now, she was sitting here with a broken ankle. It all happened so suddenly.
This was the first time Alex had collided with an indifferent world. Everything else had been negotiable, arguable. Everything else up to now could be avoided, escaped, bought off, laughed away.
I tried to comfort her and tell her it would be all right. But this was real; this was hers. No one could change it, make it right, make it fair. It was life—an absolute without explanation—that was indifferent to her plans and dreams.
"My life is ruined," she sighed, feeling utterly depressed.
"No, your life isn't ruined. Just consider this one of those dark gifts. A bad circumstance can teach you something valuable, maybe even change your life."
Suddenly, I remembered the time several years ago when I, too, had broken an ankle. It was March. The streets were slushy paths, and corners were precarious hard-packed trails, through mounds of ice and snow. I struggled on crutches, trying to balance on uneven surfaces of ice. People pushed past me, muttering about how they had to get through, about how I was taking so long. I tried gingerly to make my way up over the snowpack without slipping or letting my cast drag in the slush. My arms ached from the tension, my shoulders were rigid and numb from the digging pain of the crutches. I tried to block out the others around me, not to feel them brushing brusquely past me.
