PIVOT POINT

KEY PHRASES

 
               PIVOT POINTS:

               Abrupt and often unnoticed events that alter an individual's life path.

               RITES OF PASSAGE:

               Ceremonious events marking an important stage in an individual’s life.
 
                  MUNDANENESS OF EVENTS:

               The level of which the event is out of the ordinary, or not.

               ALTERING OF THE FUTURE:

               The extent to which an event has changed an individual’s life path.

                     
                 ABSTRACT

                 This is a novel investigation of whether, and how, mundane moments in our lives can have an overwhelming effect on the trajectory of our futures. 

                     The study was kept small. Individuals were asked to reflect on their experience with a pivot point, and complete self-report measures like mundaneness of the event, noticeability of change, and the overall altering of the future.
 
                     We found that despite age and gender, the subjects could recount an instance in which their future was altered by an abrupt moment.

                     This is an abbreviated report on one of these individuals.

 
             Figure B/ (above):
                
                Figure B. is the visual representation of the Pivot Point Theory. 
                    
                    A person’s life can be described as a coil, Pivot Points are the places where the wire bends but continues on in a different path.

                 THE HYPOTHESIS

                 There are a handful of instances that have the power to ultimately change the course of your life. Whether mundane or monstrous, these moments happen every day; late-night phone calls, missed train rides, car accidents, arrests.

                     Pivot Points act as an end and beginning in the same sense that Rites of Passage do. They serve as the closed door so that a window may open — a point on a spiral that allows for the path to continue on, just in a different direction. 

                     These smaller occasions differe from Rites, in the sense that they are typically unceremonious.

                     In the midst of a Rite of Passage, an individual will find themselves in a flurry of magnification and glorification. Pivot Points, however, are abrupt and may go unnoticed for some time.

CONCLUSION

                 Though the study was small, too small even, there seems to be some sort of concurrence between our cases. It seems we could conclude that life, though typically marked with obvious
                     and celebrated Rites of Passage, is influenced more by smaller mundane occasions. 

                     Life is simply a string of these kinds of events, which we should call Pivot Points. They are the end to the version of the future we thought we knew, and the beginning of a new one. 

                     These points, though underappreciated, are powerful. They are the past and the present and the future.

 
             Figure B/ (below):

CASE STUDY 01

 
             FAITH, A 21 YEAR OLD AT A LOCAL COLLEGE RECOUNTS HER PIVOT POINT.

                 She tells us it was a phone call on a blustery fall night. She sat shivering in her car as she stared at her buzzing phone; the name on the screen made her stomach drop — her ex.

                     They agreed to keep things civil and stay friends, they had been together for two years, and while they were very much still in love when they separated, Faith recounts that the fact the relationship had been long distance led to its inevitable end. 

                     She picked up the phone, and regretted doing so almost immediately. 

                     “Hey,” he said so cooly, almost as if they had never parted ways. He continued on to explain he was hearing about a potential job offer that 
                 
                 week, and that if Faith thought for even a moment that she wanted to get back together, he wouldn’t accept the offer. 

                     Then it happened. 

                     She let him know that she had moved on and that their ship had sailed. She asked him not contact her again. She didn’t look back.

                     The rest of the night was spent blocking his social media, deleting pictures from her phone, and mentally spinning. The man she thought she’d spend the rest of her days with was now nothing but a memory, and any chance at that version of her future dissolved. 

                MUNDANENESS OF EVENT: Quite
                    
                 NOTICEABILITY OF CHANGE: Swift
                    
                    ALTERING OF THE FUTURE Oof