(Author's note: This story was inspired by the "The Tanner Hubbs Story," by Saralee Perel, which I saw on the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation website.)

A moment is simply defined as a very short space of time, or a particular point in time. Moments on their own don’t seem so special, do they? After all they pass as quickly as they come. The time in which you've taken a breath, another has said the words, “I do.” The fleeting second which you use to check your watch, a doctor is calling the time of death for another. In the single moment that it takes for you to gasp, someone else's life had been altered forever.

Everyone can trace a significant life changing event back to just one, only one single particular point in time that they would either "not have any other way" or "they wish they could alter" for they know that the alteration of that single point in time will change everything.

It's not two . . . or three but one, just one moment in which it takes for everything to alter, (seemingly) change the course of things to an extent so devastating that you look back on that catalytic point in time and marvel at how such a little event could alter the course of destiny forever. For some that maybe a decision made rashly without thought, a simple slip of the tongue causing one to say what he does not mean, a simple phone call, an act made to salve your pride but whatever it is . . . we only realize the effects later on.

Think of life like a tapestry. In which the time is represented by the cloth; destiny by the design; and moments by the thread. The simple pulling out of a thread could go so far as to distort the whole image sometimes by only a little that it is barely noticeable and others by so much that you fail to remember what the image looked like before. That is how life is. An entwinement of different threads to create the image which is our destiny.

Life is tapestry.

Olayinka Eno Babalola (pictured)

About the author: Seventeen-year-old poetry and prose writer, Olayinka Eno Babalola, lives in Abuja, Nigeria. She was introduced to us through our regular contributor Saralee Perel. Olayinka asks that you leave an encouraging comment on Tanner Hubbs community facebook page that his family made for him as a surprise.