Every Possible You

An excerpt from Luis Alberto Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter:

....."In this globe, she was riding the train. In the next globe, she was a child. In the third globe, she was dressed in fine clothes, walking down a city street. She held children. She was pregnant. She was laughing. She was weeping. She was asleep. She held a weapon. She was naked and washing herself. She made love to a man whose face she could not see. Her wedding day. Dressed in mourning black. Her legs held up and a baby coming forth. Some globes were so far away that Teresita could barely see herself or see herself only as a small dark figure among others. They were all clear to her, though most of them were too small to be seen at all. She was everywhere in the sky. She turned around and saw herself behind herself, reading a book; cooking; preaching; laying hands on a child; riding; sleeping.

"What is this?" she asked.
"Isn't it beautiful?" said Huila.
"Yes."
"It is you," Huila said.
"I don't understand."
"It is you. Every you, every possible you. Forever, you are surrounded by countless choices of which you are to be. These are your destinies."
Huila touched a globe. It rang softly like a chime.In it, Teresita sat on the train.
"This is your next second," Hila said.
Teresita turned and stared.
"All of them. Every moment of your life, every instant, looks like this. Do you see? You are always in a universe of choices. Any moment of your life can go in any direction you choose."
"How?"
"Learn to choose."
"How?"
"Learn to see. This is your life, what it looks like to God. Every second of every day."
Teresita stood in the water and put her hands out to the globes.
"Most of us," Huila said, "trudge in a straight line. All day every day, we march like sheep. Look straight ahead. What do you see?"
She stared into the globe in front of her.
"My own face."
"We spend our lives walking into our own mirrors. All we see is ourselves as we walk down the road."
Huila spread her arms.
"Look to the side."
Teresita turned her head, and looked in the window of the train. Tomas (her father) was still asleep. Huila was gone.
"Huila!" she cried. "Where are you?"
"Beside you," Huila's voice said. "Where I have always been."
"Don't go!"
"I must."
"Huila!"
"Look ahead."
Teresita turned.
..............................
(Thanks for sharing, Mama, and thank you, Terry.)