The Billboard Paradox

How Life Can Change in an Instant

On the long highway to visit my parents, an electronic billboard flashed an AMBER Alert for a missing teenage boy. Less than a quarter mile later, another billboard announced the latest Mega Millions and Powerball jackpots, with the latter exceeding $1 billion. For a few brief seconds, both were visible at once, one pleading for help while the other promising a fortune. I immediately thought of how out of place the lottery sign was, and how, if it were electronic, it should also have displayed the AMBER Alert message. I felt a pit in my stomach thinking of parents worried sick about their son. The typical daydreaming that accompanies contemplating the crazy lottery amounts were nowhere to be found. These two signs represent two possibilities, both defined by the same invisible coin tosses that govern so much of life.One second you’re living your normal life, and in the blink of an eye, everything changes. Maybe you hit the jackpot, a sudden windfall, an opportunity or an unexpected stroke of luck that shifts your trajectory overnight. Maybe you find yourself pulled into the unimaginable, a tragedy, a crisis, a situation that tests every ounce of your resilience. Both are moments when life tilts sharply, when the world you knew dissolves into something unfamiliar. If you have nothing to hold onto, you’ll find yourself thrown about and directionless. With the right anchors or handholds, you’ll find you can weather all of life’s sudden turns.While the circumstances of the two billboards are both severe in their own right, neither fate is final. The lottery winner, intoxicated by sudden abundance, may lose themselves for a while, spending wildly, chasing every impulse while mistaking luck for permanence. Perhaps, in time, they return to Earth, realizing that meaning is more often found in what can be given as opposed to what can be bought. In time they may learn to use their newfound fortune to better the world or to build something that outlasts their luck.The abducted, on the other hand, endures an ordeal no one should ever face. Their life becomes a battle for survival and strength. If they live to tell their story, they hold the power to transform pain into purpose. Their story of resilience can inspire others to persevere through the most difficult of life’s circumstances. They will emerge from this experience mentally fortified and filled with hope and faith.Driving past those two billboards, I saw how fragile life can be. The contrast between the two, akin to taking an elevator up or down 100 stories in the blink of an eye, both blisteringly fast. Each of us lives somewhere between those signs, between the possibility of sudden joy and sudden tragedy. Every day we are granted another ordinary moment that could change in an instant.