As for the book? Most of them liked it. But one of them thought it was a “ridiculous and unrealistic look into a half-cocked woman’s first-world problems. Annoying. Irritating. Honestly, I wanted to hit her. Let’s go back to a classic for next week as this book made my brain rot.”

* * *

Seeing someone’s future, especially if it’s bad, is totally distressing.

Part of it is because if I can prevent it, I have to plan. I have to figure out how to do it, when to do it. It often involves keeping a vigilant eye out for when the premonition is coming. I’ve learned to look at people’s clothing in the premonition, which is how I can try to identify when something is going to happen.

As a kid, once I accepted that I wasn’t causing the bad event to happen, once I understood that other people couldn’t see the future, it was even more terrifying.

As an adult, it’s still terrifying.

You can save someone, or leave them to their fate.

You can interfere, or not.

It’s often a moral nightmare.

I suppose some theologist might say, “Leave fate to fate.” Or “Don’t interfere with others’ lives.” Or, the one I like least, “It’s God’s will.”

That is easy to say perched atop a philosophical, fundamentalist, or religious mountain.

But when you know that Mrs. Keeton, who is your favorite librarian, or Antonio Juarez or little Jason Chambers is going to die if you don’t do something, if you don’t say something, and they are loving people with many people who love them who will be crushed if they are killed, and who knows what horrendous reverberations will strike amidst their family and friends, you act.

You have to.

I had to.

Most of the time.

But sometimes I don’t do or say anything, and I have to emotionally and intellectually make decisions that I don’t like to make. Sometimes, for example, if I see that someone is going to die soon of a terminal illness, and there’s nothing I can do to change that, I say nothing.

I have also declined to help, to intervene, several times because the person was absolutely awful and the people around that person would be better off without him or her.

Sounds harsh, doesn’t it?

Who am I not to interfere when I see doom coming for them, even if I think the world would be a better place without them?

I don’t know. It’s like playing God, but I am an imperfect God.

I can see incredible, happy news coming for people, too. I see their laughter, their relief, their families celebrating. I love those, and whispering to someone who is in pain now about what will come for them later, bring them joy, is a relief to them and me. It lightens life’s load.

But almost each day I have to go and stand on the edge of the ocean, near my carriage house, feet in the sand, and watch the waves to maintain my calm and prevent “the shakes,” which happens when I get overstressed.