A Car Crash

When I was in my twenties I lived in Toronto. I used to drive to work just outside of the city. One sunny morning during my commute, I had my window open and I was singing away when all of a sudden traffic came to a screeching halt. I couldn’t see what had happened up ahead but soon after I watched emergency vehicle after emergency vehicle race by. For the next two hours, traffic remained at a dead stop.

I didn’t have a cell phone at the time so I stressed out for most of the two hours worrying about what I would say to my boss for being soooo late. What made things worse is that even when we started moving again, traffic simply crawled with everyone looking at whatever the hold up was. I recall being so annoyed and thinking, “Doesn’t everyone else have somewhere they need to be?”

Finally, two fairly smashed up cars that were pulled off to the side came into view. There was debris all over the road even though it looked like it had been hosed down. I wondered if anyone had been hurt. It is sometimes hard to know with a car crash.

That’s when I noticed, what I thought was, a twisted fender. The sun was shining off of it and it made it hard to tell what part of the car had been torn off with it. As I drove up closer, I was just like all the other rubber-neckers looking at the scene. I couldn’t turn my gaze away until I realized that the twisted fender wasn’t a fender at all. It was what had once been a motorcycle. There was no longer any doubt in my mind if someone had been hurt.

I know I drove very, very carefully that day and for many days and weeks after that. I felt grateful for everything. I was determined to get crap done. I was crossing stuff off my to-do lists like crazy. Eventually though, I returned to feeling more like an invincible twenty-something who had all the time in the world and who once again became irritated with traffic, who passed when I maybe shouldn’t have and who enjoyed speeding when traffic opened up.

Don’t we all have a version of this shake-awake moment when we vow to take care of business in a way we know we are capable of but then promptly go back to sleep with loosely held promises of ‘someday’, ‘maybe when’ and “I want to”? Aren’t we all, right now, living in a shake-awake series of moments? (Isn’t every moment potentially our last anyway?)

What if…each time you put on a mask or took one off, or have the realization, “that won’t be happening this year,” that you reaffirm your commitment to doing the one thing that you know in your heart you must. What if we all used Covid to catapult us into being completely alive inside the life we might be half living.

Like the song linked below reminds us…“..we are here for a good time. Not a long time…”