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Quiz: Mulder and Scully vs. Lois and Clark in an easter egg hunt in Mordor. Who finds the most?

12.05.2009

Escaping the Past

We are the sum of our past, and one event can change us in ways we can never truly understand. I learned that from Smallville.

For Clark and Lana and a dozen other people, it all goes back to the meteor shower. In 1989, a massive meteor shower all but destroyed the town of Smallville, Kansas. And there were consequences. Lana's parents were killed when a meteor fell on their car causing it to explode. Lex, who was out in a cornfield, was nearly hit by one of the rocks and lost all his hair. And, of course, Clark came into the lives of Jonathon and Martha Kent.

That moment changed their lives forever. The lives they were living before the meteors came were definitely not the same lives afterwards. Some moments are like that--they alter things so much that you find you're heading in a different direction than what you thought you were going.

As humans, we experience time as a line--and some points on that line are more significant than others. Those points shape the direction of the line afterwards in ways we can't fully comprehend until years later. Or perhaps we'll never understand. We all have those moments in our lives: it's part of our human experience. But how each of us deals with those moments differs from person to person. Just look at Smallville.

Many years after the 1989 Meteor Shower (it's funny how the moments that shape us get names--like they're a person we met, or a moment bigger than a date on a calendar), a spot of tornadoes hit Smallville. Lana was nearly killed as was Clark's father, Jonathon. After the worst of the disaster was over, Lana visited Clark at his barn:

"I just can't wait for things to get back to normal," Clark said.

"It won't," Lana replied.

"Why do you say that?"

Lana explained, "Nell used to tell me that after the meteor shower. But these events change you. It wipes out your illusions. You discover things about yourself."


Sometimes the things you discover are good, sometimes they're bad. But after your world is shaken, the only positive thing you can do is try to find a new direction to go. If you stay stuck in that moment, it may be a comfortable misery, but you'll keep reliving the same mistakes over and over. If you try to act like the moment never happened, you're a fool and will never be able to accept reality or responsibility. Either way, you're living in illusion. So the best thing to do is to walk through the fire--'cause where else can you turn?

It may be scary treading out onto new terrain. But you can face it. There's nothing you can't face...

Well, except some people have problems with bunnies. But I don't really get that.

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