Seconds

A couple years ago, a childhood friend's mother was in a terrible car accident, where she was the only person, out of four people involved, able to walk away from the scene. Two people left the scene in body bags, and the other person was airlifted to a trauma center. My friend's mom had quite literally been seconds away from death, three times throughout the ordeal. The man driving the wrong way on the highway came upon two cars driving side by side, he swerved into the lane, and woman, next to her. She was also hit, but drove onto the side of the road, and jumped out her passenger door, just missing more backlash and parts flying outside her driver's side door. She also had an open window and a lit cigarette in hand, which she clutched instinctively, never once considering the gas from two ruined cars spilling onto the roadway. Instead of being amazed by how right some seemingly tiny things went in her favor, keeping her alive, she lamented the fact that she shouldn't have been in that area at all. A series of petty, but kind of unusual, happenings had conspired to bring her there.

As I heard "I (she) shouldn't have even been there!" time and time again, I was reminded of Dante in Clerks whining "I'm not even supposed to be here tooodaaaayyy." repeatedly. No celebration of the fact that she was lucky as fuck to be alive, no praising her precious god for saving her life so she could do better things with herself, nothing of the sort was occurring in the conversations I heard. Granted, I didn't hear every conversation, but . . .

I almost got angry. I almost fell into the "holy shit, what bad luck that she was there" thinking surrounding me. Almost, almost, almost. I almost missed a very important lesson I had been missing for years. The truth of the matter is that each and every one of us could die before the end of this sentence. Shit happens, and it often happens quickly. Furthermore, we could be missing death by seconds every hour of our lives and never know it. This might sound like pessimistic thinking, but it's not. It very easily could lead to paranoia and agoraphobia, but it didn't.

What it did lead to was a respect for the fragile nature of life. A slow driver in front of me was no longer a source of anger and frustration, it became a potential life saver, a reason I didn't reach a certain spot when I had wanted. Since life can end at any second, I chose to see delays differently. Instead of fucking up my day, I realized that while I was stuck going ten miles below the speed limit, perhaps a car swerved into any empty lane instead of the spot where I would have been had I been traveling above the speed limit, like I prefer. Instead of getting mad at morons who didn't wait their turn at stop signs, I chose to believe there was some reason the whole ten seconds I had to wait was important. The thing is, I'll never know how many times I've cheated death, and missed a potential life ending situation by minutes or even seconds. I realized that so many things influence the outcome of life, so many nuances and choices made by other people could affect my life, that I just had to decide perceived set-backs and problems were just that-- perceived. Rejecting "the world is out to get me" theory and embracing the idea that I could have been saved by a tiny amount of time on multiple occasions on any given day freed me to give thanks for living. Every moment left to us is a gift. I have been leaving my gift on a landing somewhere lately. I need to pick it back up, and treasure it once more. I owe it to those who have found a few seconds or minutes merciless and cruel