Hello,
In the last two weeks, I have received some great questions about my book from readers. In my next two blogs, I want to share them with you...


Chris' Question
Since I finished The Weight of a Moment, I have thought about it a lot, probably more than any book I’ve read. While the two protagonists, Tom and Nick, carry the story, I found myself thinking about Alex. He is a minor character but Tom and Nick both have deep conversations with him. Is there more to Alex than I realize?

My Answer
Great question, Chris. And yes, I viewed Alex as a minor but very important character. And yes again, his conversations with Tom and Nick are significant.

Alex is a typical kid who has no idea what he wants to do with his life. He is at a critical juncture in life and, like most recent high school grads, doesn’t even know it. Nick has a first conversation with him and tells him, “You don’t need to know what you want to do in life, only that you want to do something.” Then later, Tom tells him about his day at the Chesapeake Bay and the man with the Labrador retriever. It is a powerful story about finding what you are born to do.

I see Alex’s role in the story as representing the “possibility of moments.” Moments happen in our lives all the time that have the potential to be significant, but only if we seize them and act on them.

I think of Alex in two possible outcomes:

Flash forward fifteen years and he is in his mid-thirties. In the first scenario, he is a grown man who has done nothing with his life but smoke pot every day, work meaningless part-time jobs, and play video games.

In the second scenario, Alex is sitting in a conference room, CEO of a successful business he started, talking to his employees about the moment that changed his life and set his course in life. He tells them about one of those conversations with Nick or Tom and how he came out of it a different person, with newfound direction and purpose in his life. After that day, he thought about the conversation often and moved forward with it as his mantra.

This quote has a different meaning in the book but it applies to Alex also...

“In every lifetime, sometimes more than once, a circumstance occurs that opens the heart to its fullest measure, where significant, meaningful change is possible, where failures and shortcomings can be absolved, and a person can be reborn. Some are healed or renewed by the experience, while others fail to recognize the opportunity and it passes by.”

Those moments with Tom and Nick either impacted Alex or they did not. It was up to him. Those were "potential moments."