Sometimes, on beautiful days like today, where the sun shines high and the sky burns the bluest blue, it is hard for me not to think back to another sunny and perfect day: November 26, 2008. It is not the actual details of that day that haunt me, though of course it is in my mind. It is more the feelings and thoughts in my own life.
On the way to my office that morning, while I admired the breathtaking brightness of the day, I rounded a turn in my Honda Civic and was met with a semi-truck barreling toward me, across the center line, in my lane. At just that minute my breath caught in my chest for that milli-second I wondered if we would collide - and then, the truck righted itself and continued safely past me.
There never appeared a serious threat, only that glitch in time when I didn't know if the truck would veer left or right, to safety or catastrophe. I inhaled in relief and thought, "That's how fast it happens. People die in those seconds. I wouldn't die like that, right? Because I believe I do live a charmed life. But, still, I bet the people who die in those seconds believe they too live a charmed life, right up to the moment of death. Wow. You just never know."
I got to my office safe and sound. Nevertheless, all the death on that day in the news, in the newspaper, reminded me repeatedly of my earlier experience: Right before something really bad happens, in a moment that separates life from the beyond, does everyone think it won't happen to them?
Because they too live a charmed life? When do you realize that, charmed life or not, things are not going to veer back to safety at the last second?
Before I went to sleep that night, I reached for a "dream journal" so that I might recount my thoughts on the day, detail what I learned about the realities of life. But I could not get beyond my own slight scare that morning, eons from where I was that night. I could not rectify what had happened a few hours after that, could not wrap my brain around the things I had seen on television, the stories I had heard, and how it all seemed eerily coincidental.
I still can't, except to say this: How mundane go the days when our reality shifts beneath us forever. Beautiful afternoons like this one are meant to be breathed in deeply and used as reminders to be grateful for the charmed lives we do indeed live.
And never to lose sight that sometimes things do change in a second.
Take care….
On the way to my office that morning, while I admired the breathtaking brightness of the day, I rounded a turn in my Honda Civic and was met with a semi-truck barreling toward me, across the center line, in my lane. At just that minute my breath caught in my chest for that milli-second I wondered if we would collide - and then, the truck righted itself and continued safely past me.
There never appeared a serious threat, only that glitch in time when I didn't know if the truck would veer left or right, to safety or catastrophe. I inhaled in relief and thought, "That's how fast it happens. People die in those seconds. I wouldn't die like that, right? Because I believe I do live a charmed life. But, still, I bet the people who die in those seconds believe they too live a charmed life, right up to the moment of death. Wow. You just never know."
I got to my office safe and sound. Nevertheless, all the death on that day in the news, in the newspaper, reminded me repeatedly of my earlier experience: Right before something really bad happens, in a moment that separates life from the beyond, does everyone think it won't happen to them?
Because they too live a charmed life? When do you realize that, charmed life or not, things are not going to veer back to safety at the last second?
Before I went to sleep that night, I reached for a "dream journal" so that I might recount my thoughts on the day, detail what I learned about the realities of life. But I could not get beyond my own slight scare that morning, eons from where I was that night. I could not rectify what had happened a few hours after that, could not wrap my brain around the things I had seen on television, the stories I had heard, and how it all seemed eerily coincidental.
I still can't, except to say this: How mundane go the days when our reality shifts beneath us forever. Beautiful afternoons like this one are meant to be breathed in deeply and used as reminders to be grateful for the charmed lives we do indeed live.
And never to lose sight that sometimes things do change in a second.
Take care….
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