My brother Jim was skiing in Colorado in early March and some guy on a snowboard ran into him, knocking him down. When he hit the snow, Jim’s leg (femur head, actually) was broken, his arm dislocated and the shoulder socket fractured. Nearly three weeks, two surgeries and lots of pain meds later Jim finally got back home to Bloomington but he’ll be in a wheel chair for at least a few weeks and will be going through some painful rehab for the next year to (hopefully) regain full use.
Several years ago, my wife Cathy was out walking our two dogs (the MoLos are good-sized Labrador retrievers). She had stopped to chat with some neighbors when our dogs wanted to go sniff another dog; she wasn’t properly braced and got jerked off her feet. When she landed on the sidewalk she broke her arm (the upper part of the humerus) which required surgery; a bunch of pins and screws later and a year’s worth of pain and rehab and she’s back where she was (more or less).
In both cases, an instant in time separated my wife and my brother from what they were doing and their plans for the rest of the day, and set them on a completely unexpected (and unwelcome) new path for the next six months.
It gives me pause.
I know we can’t spend our lives thinking of what bad things might happen to us in the next instant, and I’m not suggesting we live in fear of the unexpected, but every so often things happen that brings into sharp focus (if we take the time see it) how quickly things can change. Both Jim and Cathy will (and did) recover; not everyone is so fortunate. If the months of pain and rehab could be considered a “fortunate” experience. But two lessons come to mind: the first (and most obvious) is to use caution. Neither Jim nor Cathy were at fault, but were the two incidents avoidable? Probably; Cathy might have braced herself better when she saw the other dogs, and Jim might’ve taken a split second to look upslope. Please don’t mistake what I’m saying; neither Jim nor Cathy are responsible (or to blame) for what happened to them; it’s clear that the snowboarder ran into Jim (plus the downhill skier ALWAYS has right of way), and Cathy couldn’t have predicted that the MoLos would jerk her off her feet. But it’s also conceivable that it could have been otherwise. I think of the many (MANY) times when something I did, or a decision I made, could have gone south on me.
The second lesson is how quickly things can change. From one second to the next, every thought, every plan, every intent that Jim and Cathy had was put on hold and an entirely new set of decisions and intentions came to the forefront.
I am not really sure what the most important lesson here is, except to maybe take an extra split second to think about what’s going on around us. Maybe we could avoid the kind of misery that both Jim and Cathy had to endure.
And maybe to be more in the moment, because it can change in a heartbeat.
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer.
Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.
The difference of a split second
My brother Jim was skiing in Colorado in early March and some guy on a snowboard ran into him, knocking him down. When he hit the snow, Jim’s leg (femur head, actually) was broken, his arm dislocated and the shoulder socket fractured. Nearly three weeks, two surgeries and lots of pain meds later Jim finally got back home to Bloomington but he’ll be in a wheel chair for at least a few weeks and will be going through some painful rehab for the next year to (hopefully) regain full use.
Several years ago, my wife Cathy was out walking our two dogs (the MoLos are good-sized Labrador retrievers). She had stopped to chat with some neighbors when our dogs wanted to go sniff another dog; she wasn’t properly braced and got jerked off her feet. When she landed on the sidewalk she broke her arm (the upper part of the humerus) which required surgery; a bunch of pins and screws later and a year’s worth of pain and rehab and she’s back where she was (more or less).
In both cases, an instant in time separated my wife and my brother from what they were doing and their plans for the rest of the day, and set them on a completely unexpected (and unwelcome) new path for the next six months.
It gives me pause.
I know we can’t spend our lives thinking of what bad things might happen to us in the next instant, and I’m not suggesting we live in fear of the unexpected, but every so often things happen that brings into sharp focus (if we take the time see it) how quickly things can change. Both Jim and Cathy will (and did) recover; not everyone is so fortunate. If the months of pain and rehab could be considered a “fortunate” experience. But two lessons come to mind: the first (and most obvious) is to use caution. Neither Jim nor Cathy were at fault, but were the two incidents avoidable? Probably; Cathy might have braced herself better when she saw the other dogs, and Jim might’ve taken a split second to look upslope. Please don’t mistake what I’m saying; neither Jim nor Cathy are responsible (or to blame) for what happened to them; it’s clear that the snowboarder ran into Jim (plus the downhill skier ALWAYS has right of way), and Cathy couldn’t have predicted that the MoLos would jerk her off her feet. But it’s also conceivable that it could have been otherwise. I think of the many (MANY) times when something I did, or a decision I made, could have gone south on me.
The second lesson is how quickly things can change. From one second to the next, every thought, every plan, every intent that Jim and Cathy had was put on hold and an entirely new set of decisions and intentions came to the forefront.
I am not really sure what the most important lesson here is, except to maybe take an extra split second to think about what’s going on around us. Maybe we could avoid the kind of misery that both Jim and Cathy had to endure.
And maybe to be more in the moment, because it can change in a heartbeat.
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer. Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.