It’s funny how even with overhead lights, we couldn’t see the text on our prayer leaflets. We had to hold a glass with a candle inside it, the temperature of which gets higher and higher that spreads from the top going down as the candle gets shorter.
It’s funny; I suppose that’s part of our penitence as 13 to 16 year-olds going on an overnight Lenten retreat.
It would be better if all the attendees each had a candle but they couldn’t provide for all of us. In the end, my friends and I had to share some candles.
There’s another side to that story; I initially only took two candles, one for me and another for my crush. When I got back to my group of friends, it turned out that only two out of the five of us went to get candles except my friend took only one. The five of us had to share three candles: one of us got a candle for her own, and the rest of us formed pairs to share the other two candles. I shared mine with my crush.
I took my shot, missed, and somehow got a rebound that scored more points.
After that, we did the Stations of the Cross with the candles. Throughout the activity, I was barely a feet away from my crush. We shared one light, and one prayer copy; we had to be so near each other that I could hear her breathing. It was unimaginable.
Eventually, the candle got short enough that I started running out of space to hold the glass. I couldn’t just let it go because then we can’t read the prayers which means we didn’t need to stay close to each other. But to keep holding it means I might burn my hand. Oh, the age-old question: the heart or the body?
It was agonizing, but it was still a story to share with her. We laughed at the situation but, seeing as I held the glass but from the beginning when it was cold, it was unfair to hand it to her when it was burning. So I held strong. It was only in the last couple minutes that I finally couldn’t take it anymore and blew the fire away.
Even when things go right, just as Murphy’s Law states, something will go wrong. And eventually, someone will give up; eventually, the good thing ends.
Maybe I could have held it until the very end, risking injury. Maybe we could have shared the burden, found a way somehow, and make it through the end. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But what-if’s don’t mean anything after the fact. Thinking of what could have gone right helps no more than thinking of what could have gone wrong, and believe me, there’s more things that could have gone wrong than right. I could have dropped the glass early: someone could have provided their candle; we could have decided praying despite the inconvenience is not worth it; and plenty more. That it reached that point and we still managed to sit together for the mass afterwards is already more of a blessing than what I had signed up for.
And it had other repercussions. That experience improved our friendship: we got closer and got more comfortable with each other. Before the end of the school year, we’d have started sharing lunch tables. It was a nexus event.
That is, until summer vacation and our friendship seemingly reset in the following school year as if none of that had happened. It seemed being in different classes was all it took to break everything off.
I had more part in that, however. I didn’t reach out, I didn’t pursue her. I lacked effort. And worse, after a couple of months, I had a new crush and acted as if I’ve moved on when even after all this time, I apparently still haven’t.
There’s a lesson to be learned here, but one I seemingly haven’t learned still.
Flipped Serendipity 