Epiphany

George Smart woke late.

He stared across at the clock’s numbers, realising he would have to hurry if he wanted to catch his usual bus. George didn’t like hurrying. He didn’t like being late.

It had been just one more night of tossing and turning; an event all too common with him and he could see no obvious way of fixing it. He mulled it over as he shaved. Maybe it was those images; he knew they disturbed him. Well that was natural wasn’t it? Dead bodies lying in the streets, buildings turned to rubble, smoke rising up out of shattered cities, towns and villages…

He had considered what he thought was a silly notion – just avoiding the TV news in the evening, but that didn’t make sense. That would just be burying his head in the sand, wouldn’t it?

He locked the door of his tiny apartment. Since he was single now, his home was small but it suited him very well. He reflected on how much it really did suit him as he made his way to the main road. It was just such a pity that he could not enjoy decent sleeps in his little haven. His single bed was actually very comfortable.

The traffic seemed unusually heavy this morning. As he reached his stop, he was shaken by the sudden roaring of a car engine, accelerating towards the far cross-roads. He stopped and watched it speeding towards the lights, which had just turned red. It got faster and faster, and then slammed on its brakes.

George just stood and stared. He didn’t move. One or two fellow travellers walked past him and said something, but he didn’t hear what they said. He was transfixed. He was having an epiphany…

George missed his bus and had to wait for the next one. It didn’t bother him, as it gave him time to take in the full meaning of what he had witnessed. This was the answer; but he was trying to work out exactly what it was the answer to. He knew it meant something really important to him. If he could only figure it out… His bus came and he managed to come out of his trance long enough to climb on.

The ride was only a few minutes, but it was time enough for him to see and figure out that the car, rushing towards that red light the way it did when the traffic lights were clearly red, said it all. It had shown George what was going on in the world; what people were doing, why those buildings were falling down with bodies scattered in the streets. Would anybody else see what he sees? Would it make any sense to others?

He was a little nervous now as he got off and made his way to the office. How would the people in the office take it? Although he was smart enough to know that his fellow workers and a small group of friends saw him as a quiet person of sober habits and a simple life style, how would they take to being told what he had just this minute discovered? Would he lose friends or respect in the workplace?

It didn’t matter! It didn’t matter at all; there was no way he wasn’t going to tell anybody that would listen. He knew what people were doing; he could see what was happening in the world. He had to tell people, he couldn’t keep it to himself.

He spent the day convincing others that he had seen something that meant, well something… It was hard at first, but after talking to three or four of his fellow colleagues he got into the stride of it. By the end of the day those around him were beginning to give him funny looks, occasionally he had caught people smiling and winking at each other, but he had always been generally liked and such an easy person to get along with that nobody really took too much notice of his ramblings.

That evening he watched the news. It was there, the same, the buildings, the bodies and the smoke. But he knew why. He suddenly realised that he was watching it, and he was almost OK with it all, because he knew why it was happening. He could see what was happening in the world; were people were going, were they were heading – were everybody was heading!

That night George slept well.