Circumstance, our turning point in life

by Frank Eckblom

FRANK: Is Circumstance really that important in our education, our schooling, our lives?

MARK: If Caesar had not crossed the bridge at Rubicon, it is doubtful that we would be here, but perhaps somewhere else, in some other culture.

FRANK: In your essay – The Turning Point in My Life – you reported that Caesar said to his generals: “We may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms.”

MARK: This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big and little, of Caesar’s previous life had been leading up to it, stage by stage, link by link….It was one of the links in your life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine.

FRANK: You went on to write while Caesar was contemplating the decision, someone sitting near was playing upon a pipe. “When not onlly the shepherds, but number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side.

MARK: So he crossed – and changed the future of the whole human race, for all time.

FRANK: Let me continue: “We don’t know his name…he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was there by compulsion of his life-chain, to blow the electrifyiing blast that was to make up Caesar’s mind for him, and thence go piping down the aisles of history forever.”

MARK: With little effort we can all recall certain Circumstance in our life that turned things in a direction. My first was when I as a kid got the measles.

FRANK: From what I read in your autobiography, you yourself made that Circumstance.

MARK: I had nothing to do with the coming of the measle epidemic. That was the circumstance.

FRANK: But you put yourself in the position to get the disease.

MARK: True. It was an opportunity to get out of a “prison” that was driving me mad – confined to my own house, in my own room, to protect me from the germ that was decimating my neighbors.

FRANK: Then Circumstance is not something an individual can create.

MARK: By no means. The stranger who tooted his horn in earshot of Caesar  was a Circumstance that led to his decision to cross over the river on the bridge and win  the greatest battle in all of history.

FRANK: And in your Notebook in 1902 you wrote: “Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.”

MARK: Think about it Frank. Can you recall a Circumstance in your childhood that was one of the most important of all time?

FRANK: I was 8 or 9 when I was visiting a museum in our neighborhood. The curator, a very old man in my eyes, invited me into his office and asked me to write my name. After I did that, he lifted the paper to my eyes and told me to observe the making of my “k’s”. He told me to notice that I had not closed or connected the bottom of the letter as it should be. “Learn to close that letter, my son, and you will become famous.”

MARK: Were you able to close it eventually?

FRANK: At times. But it takes a special effort and has all 80 years of my life.

MARK: Keep trying, Frank. Another Circumstance could change everything for you.

FRANK: Good night, Mark. We’ll continue this study in due time.

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