In the battle between good and evil, ...

... reason and superstition, men and women, vanilla and chocolate, Pepsi and Coke, there comes a time when you may find yourself in that grey area, that no man’s land, that twilight zone, where ideas and opinions blur and certainty goes down the way of bell-bottoms and honest politicians. This is your "I wake up one day in a hotel room with a terrible hangover, I hear someone in the shower and I don’t remember a thing about last night" moment. You thought you were the Titanic and now you’ve hit the iceberg. You’ve just fallen into your own personal rabbit hole. You’re not sure of anything any more and you wish you’d paid more attention when  Sagan talked about that "Uncertainty Principle" on a Cosmos rerun you’d seen one night zapping like a zombie several years ago. You know, like that time when having defended your boss to your spouse the previous evening and justified your relocation to the archive department 3 months ago as an opportunity to further your career; you come to work the next morning and are told you’ve just been laid off due to the new "under-sizing" policy to help raise the falling stock price. "Unfortunate, yes, but not really unfair. It’s nothing personal, you understand. Most regrettable indeed and oh, good luck, we will miss you!" You are confused. You feel like the carpet has just been pulled from under your feet. But hey, you’re not the first one, are you now? Just pick yourself up and keep on going. The question is, of course, where?

Imagine you’re a Catholic priest who’s led an exemplary life, shepherded his flock through life's trials and tribulations, always telling them to trust in the mysterious ways that God works to test his children and promising heaven and salvation in the end. You’ve stayed away from all excesses, wedding tips and young choir boys. And then you die. Your last shred of a memory as your brain shuts down is of a pitch black shroud falling on you. No beam of light coming from the heavens to guide you up the steps. No nothing. And in that last split second of your consciousness you realize that, well, to put it mildly, you’ve been had.

And that’s exactly how I feel now. Had.

But let me explain how I got here. And then maybe you will agree how I totally not deserve to be here. Yes, I seek your sympathy, and why not? It’s the least I can hope for. For I have fallen and I have no idea about what to do next.

There is a certain phenomenon in the world: Some call it coincidence, some call it Jungian synchronicity, and some call it selective perception, while others may simply refer to it as "fate". Whatever it is, that’s what it was when …