There are no guarantees in life.

And people always ask “where were you when?” you know. You’ll always know.

Everything that happens in our lives moves us forward, pushing, pushing us into things we can’t predict. And so everything that has happened to me before, has carried me to where I am now.

At St. Patrick’s Cathedral today I stopped, with all of the people around me, to look at its crowded steps, a sea of blue and badges and American flags, all paying homage, all paying credence to no guarantees.

Stuck on the 1/9 uptown on Friday for thirty long minutes, I was standing next to a man who was crying. Sobbing. Everyone around him in the crowded car noticed, looked away, pretended not to see. Because that’s what we do. We don’t have time to stop pretending.

I thought as I stood there, my eyes looking into a book that I was no longer reading, about what had happened to him. Perhaps his entire life changed mere moments before he boarded the train - a fleeting sight of someone from his past, a harsh word, the lingering scent of a perfume that had long ago broken his heart, a phone call.

And then I realized standing there, looking quickly at his red, hurt, tear-stained face; that I was guilty of pretending, too.

Life can change in an instant, in passing seconds that we can’t control. And as I walked today, against the large crowd of people on 5th struggling slowly towards home, I thought about change and time and all that it can do to the heart of a person, a people, of a place.

Because there are no guarantees in life. And people will always ask, “where were you when?” and we know. We’ll always know.