Have you ever just "walked away"? Sometimes it's okay. I think of three very strange, even surreal instances in my life where I just walked away.
I was going home from work at the Bible college, back when we were in our old building, and I had to cross the road (a very busy avenue) to get to my bus stop on the other side. I caught the green light in time only to get to the middle of the road before it turned red. So I had to wait there, in that little "island" under the traffic light, for the green again. As I was standing there, funnily enough (you'll see why in a moment), I began whimsically reflecting on how, here in this little safe spot under the traffic light between the lanes of busy traffic running this way and that to the sides of me, it was like I was on an island, my protected little island where none of these hurtling piles of metal could touch me. Yes, it was quite funny, in the odd sense, that I happened to have that thought at just that moment, as it seems someone was intent on proving me wrong. Just as that thought flitted through my consciousness I noticed, in the lane I had just crossed, to my left, a car heading in my direction (of course, as all of them were), but this car didn't seem to know very clearly where the lane markings were. It was dusk, not terribly dark yet, but the cars had their lights on, which always makes it seem darker outside by comparison. Watching the oncoming traffic, in the glare of their headlights, it seemed like night. I fixed on this one car that, "if I didn't know better, I'd say was heading straight for me," as I thought at the moment. But of course that was silly. I wasn't standing in a lane. I was standing right in front of the traffic light and its cement base that came up to about thigh-level. There was nowhere further to go in my "lane" than smack into the base of the traffic light (and smack into me!). So of course my eyes must be playing tricks on me. I kept watching the oncoming car, thinking, "Yeah, a person could almost believe that car was heading straight for me....really, if I didn't know better I'd say he was about to plow right into me...you know, this is actually starting to worry me...waitaminnit, if that guy doesn't correct pronto he's GOING to hit me!" And with perhaps a quarter of a second to spare I leaped like a grasshopper out of the car's path (and into the other lane to my right, which God providentially saw to it had no cars coming along at just that second) and skittered over to the opposite sidewalk. In the process of skittering I heard a huge metallic-cement THUD. When I reached the other sidewalk I looked back and there was the car, smashed into the base of the pillar, right where I'd been standing. The car's interior was full of smoke. I stood, waited, watched. In a moment the driver got out, looking fine if annoyed. He checked the front of his car, then went for his phone. Never so much as blinked an eye in my direction. At which point it occurred to me that the best thing now was to walk away. He's fine, this has nothing to do with me at this point, and I'm fine, too, so...I walked away and got on the bus. Thinking, "Hm, well, well, well..." and "Thank you, God!"
Another time I was in an airport, can't remember which at the moment (ah, all the airports I've loved and left), waiting for the long flight over the Atlantic, returning to Ukraine. In the gate area a really weird disturbance commenced. A man was angry at his (I presume) wife and he was pursuing her around the waiting area, punching her whenever he could. Naturally this got everybody's attention. I noticed they were speaking Russian. So I strategically said, in Russian, "Let's call the police." That worked. The guy glared at me in shock and then ran off into the terminal. As there were no personnel yet at our gate a bunch of us went to the next gate and started telling a young man there what was going on. He prissily spluttered something ridiculous about "Why didn't you come tell us about this before?", to which I said, "It just happened and we're telling you NOW!" At that point the conversation was terminated by a ferocious scream right into the back of my neck. I swung around and it was that guy, with a maniacal rage in his face. Our eyes made an instant, intense contact, his face contorted in terror, he let out a chilling shriek and fell to the floor in convulsions. Yes, yes, I know what some of you are going to say, and perhaps what you'll say I ought to have done. Well, I can't say whether that would have been "the ticket" or not at just that moment. But what I did instead was...walk away. I saw a bunch of other people trying to control this guy, realized there was nothing else for me to do here, and quietly walked away. I did some browsing in the shops. A few minutes later I noticed that supercilious young man from the gate racing through the terminal spluttering, "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod." When I returned to my gate area a man there passed a comment that that guy was suffering mental problems. I replied, "Mental problems or whatever, all I knew was, I don't want THAT on OUR flight over the Atlantic." So, mission accomplished.
The other time I walked away was, in its own way, too, kind of surreal. And it was also in an airport. I was seated at one of those benches not right in the gate area but along the walls of the concourse. This was in Vienna. I had just dropped something, a coin maybe, and was kneeling down to pick it up, probably looking a bit like the absent-minded professor type, when I happened to glance up and instantly made direct eye-contact with a young lady heading my way. That kind of eye contact, you know, that says, "I just saw you seeing me seeing you." It's almost mystical how much info can be transmitted in that fleeting moment. In that contact I registered a gleam of cunningness and triumph, accompanied by a subtle self-satisfied smirk, that seemed to say, "You're my pigeon." The effect was only enhanced by her very cat-like eyes. At which point I inwardly replied, "Got that wrong, girl." Sure enough, she sat down right next to me, on a bench that could only accommodate two, "as if" she were just taking a rest...uncomfortably close to a total stranger when there were plenty of other places to sit. Right. Yeah. Okay, what's the game going to be? She sat and looked away from me, weirdly staring off into the distance, as if looking for somebody. As for me, I was gathering my things. And then she slowly turned her face towards me, as if slowly unveiling a work of art, to reveal a single tear coursing down her cheek. "Ah ha, check. You needed those 30 seconds to work up the tear. Well, I'm not interested in how this plot develops further, young lady." And, undramatically and drily, I got up and walked away.
There are times when you are beholden neither to Man nor God to see something through, when you are free to opt out, when the best thing for you to do is...something other than "this."
