Saved by the Invisibles – By Jonathan Carroll

How many times in a day, week, or month are we saved by the invisibles?

Those small or insignificant sights, sounds, scenes, smells… we often ignore or overlook in our every day, but which at certain times appear at such ideal or crucial moments in our existence that it’s hard to believe right then there’s not some cosmic chess player putting the piece right in front of us for a specific purpose — sometimes benevolent, sometimes not.

This morning in a gray-as-wet-gravel mood, I’m standing on a street corner waiting for the traffic light to change. It doesn’t. For some nefarious reason, I’ve come face to face with a stop light that hates me and refuses to let me cross. I’m tempted to go but it would be just my luck today to do it and suddenly five cops would leap out of nowhere, notebooks in hand. How to make gravel gray grimmer. So I stand and wait… and wait…

Until looking across the street off to one side, I see this: a very old man dressed all in white at a sidewalk café table reading a newspaper. Sitting close by him is an equally ancient Golden Retriever, more white now than gold, a face as serene as the Buddha’s. Combined, these two old earthly angels must be a hundred. I start to grin at the beauty and peacefulness of the pair. But it gets better.

Very slowly the dog puts a paw on the man’s knee and leaves it there. Eventually without raising his eyes from the paper, the man breaks off a giant piece of the cake he is eating and offers it to his compañero, who takes it with perfect slow dignity. The paw immediately comes off the leg and the two elderly gentlemen go back to before.

A few moments later my enemy the traffic light changes but I remain there, smiling and grateful.

Once again saved by the invisibles…