In real life, on the day before they don’t announce disasters that will happen the following day. In real life, no one tells you that you will break your leg tomorrow, or that a car coming the other way will cross over the centerline tomorrow and kill a loved one.
I’ve noticed some disturbing Facebook videos lately. I suspect that the people who post these disaster videos do it for the shock value, for grotesque entertainment. The fact that security cameras are everywhere means that people can easily find these video snippets of bizarre disasters, because these cameras are always running, so they are always ready to capture the banal and the extraordinary. In one of these videos, a heavy load drops on top of a pedestrian who was minding his business walking down the sidewalk. In another video, a man was walking with his female friend when a runaway mounted tire bounced across the roadway at high speed, hitting his upper back and slamming his head to the concrete. Stunned, the woman leans down to attend to his apparently lifeless body and then the clip suddenly ends.
No one wrote that man a warning note the day before: “You will be hit by a runaway tire tomorrow and you will die.”
No one tells you that this is the last day before you start having a pain that turns into a chronic pain. I once had a pinched nerve in my neck. I remember when that two-year period of intense pain began, but I had no premonition of this torture on the day before. I was lucky regarding that pain. An amazingly talented surgeon eventually made that pain disappear while I was unconscious on an operating room table.
No one tells you on one fine day that this will be your last fine day, perhaps for a long time, and perhaps forever. No one tells you that on this fine day, it will be the last time you are employed in your dream job. No one tells you that today is the last day that your house will have a roof. No one tells you that tomorrow you will begin four excruciating months in a hospital. No one tells you that today is the last day you will kiss the person you love more than you ever loved any human being. No one tells you these things.
I talked to a friend who told me, “Erich, that’s just what Life does.” And that’s correct. Life zigs and zags. Sometimes it throws a banana peel, but sometimes it’s a wrench or even a grenade. How self-important are we to assume that life is supposed to be a television episode where everyone is always OK when the next episode begins? How greedy we are to assume that we will enjoy eternal bliss on a roiling planet!
The lesson I take from this is that we must remind ourselves to seize the day. Savor what we are offered, day after day after day. Because no matter how talented, amiable and optimistic you are, today might be the best day of the rest of your life.
THAT was really heavy…. are you ok?
Thanks for asking. You are very observant. I’m OK.
That runaway tire is no joke. I once saw a runaway tire on an in-town street, so the car was probably doing 35 mph or so. The tire rolled about half a block, hit a curb square-on (the curb was on a cross street), fly across the sidewalk, hit a brick building facing the sidewalk (it hit the window sill of a large picture window, shattering the window), and rocketed straight up vertical into the air. The spinning tire cleared the top of the building, fell straight back down to the street it had come from, and continued rolling out of sight. The building it hit was three stories high, which indicates the energy stored in that spinning tire. Thankfully, there were no pedestrians and the tire didn’t go through the picture window, so no one was hurt, but it could easily have hit and killed one or more people who would have never seen it coming. Carpe diem.
When I saw that tire hit that man it was horrifying. Another site suggested that he somehow survived with only a concussion. But the weight and speed of that tire turned it into a bomb.
Good to hear from you again Grumpy!