that which does not kill us...

When I was 26 I was driving my motorcycle up the street, about two blocks from home, when a car missed a stop sign and T-boned me doing 55kmh (30mph for you imperial types). It changed the course of my life, as near-fatal accidents are wont to do.

And I will be forever grateful.

It was just an accident, one of those things. She was from out of town and lost, looking for the regional hospital, late for an appointment. It was bright and sunny. A big, white cube van was travelling in the opposite direction to me, on the side of the road from which she was coming, The van missed sparing me by about a foot, her car whizzing past its rear bumper, the light color of the van perhaps making it less visible to her searching, distracted eyes, the van hiding her from me until it was way too late.

In emergency I apparently told jokes while they prepped me for surgery, in between throwing up and passing out. I was a minor hospital celebrity for months. The surgery that day was the first of eleven over the next three years, some big, some smaller, some in my home town, some in Vancouver. I learned cool names for things: Acetabulum and trochanteric femur (neither of which should ever be shattered if at all possible), multiple compound fracture, osteomyolitis, Hoffman external fixator, Portacath central lines, hip-to-knee Mercedes incision. 

If you look real close, you can even read my name - don't tell them I stole the x-ray though

If you learn the lingo, the doctors pay more attention to you – take you seriously.

I learned much of the usual near-death stuff too: Life is short and fleeting and ridiculously precious; pain is temporary, and when it isn’t you can either let it make you mental or stronger, occasionally both; people handle tragedy and trauma different ways, but how they handle it doesn’t always tell the whole story about them.

For me alone, I learned that almost any amount of pain is better than to be made dumb by drugs. I could not wait to be off the morphine pump. I went from accident to T3’s in five days. The morphine stole my mind, and I could not forgive it that insult. That’s maybe just me though, I get that.

I learned that, while shit simply does not happen “for a reason”, we can impose reason on anything if we really want to. For me, the accident didn’t change much beyond the length of my left leg, my range of hip flexibility, and the parameters of possible strength for that leg. Everything else can be overcome. After the accident I took up climbing, martial arts, hockey (I play goal – I’m weak on the low glove side, but I compensate), and returned to writing. These things aren’t why the accident happened; They happened after it, in spite of it, to prove that the accident didn’t define who I would be.

If I was inclined to believe in that “a reason for all things” argument, the writing would be, possibly, the only circumstantial proof in support of it. I was forced to go back to school, to university, which I had skipped after high school. Uni led me back to writing. The return to school was the best thing to come out of the whole mess.

But whether you argue design or “shit happens”, it’s what we do with it that counts. It’s what happens after we wake up that defines us, not the accident or the injuries or the staples or the scars. They shape what happens, but we impose the reason and order and purpose and wildness and joy and everything else that is only a potential, the possibility of a possibility, when the trauma happens.

In this sense, trauma is much like waking up every day. We get to impose our spirit and will. Every. Fucking. Day.

I was reminded of this today when a Twitter friend informed me that she was creating a new blog and a new Twitter account. Melissa, my friend, is doing this because, in some fundamental way, she’s more now than the old account and blog can define all by themselves. She’s moving forward from a trauma that has shaped who she is, what her first blog and account were about, and onto new adventures and joys and frustrations and triumphs.

Her choice inspired me and made me smile.

I know other amazing people, both in RL and online who, like Melissa, have transcended far more serious injuries than mine, and who bear scars that run much deeper than my fleshly ones. They fight paralysis, or cancer, or traumas that make my broken bones and scars and really cool x-rays looks small in comparison. And still, they aspire and ascend and are beautiful doing it.

We all have scars; that’s just life. And... scars are beautiful in their own way. I call mine my "portable wealth".

We are not what has happened to us, as much as it may affect the path we take. We are who we choose to be, and who we will choose to become. Any time I doubt that, I check the scars and remember how far I’ve come from there. Or I see someone like Melissa and the amazing things she’s doing for herself and others.

The evidence is all around us. Nietzsche was right. 

‘Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.’ Seneca

I’m helping a good friend with home renovations this week (which is my excuse for the longer drift between blog posts). He has a week off in which to get two weeks worth of deconstruction and reconstruction completed, so the days have been long, admittedly longer for him than for me (which is probably a good thing, my 43-year old body is reminding me), but we’ve still managed a couple 12-hour days of framing and dry-walling. Demolition didn’t take as long (which always pushes me towards some interesting observations, but I’ll leave those for today). I wake each day noting my pant size shrink proportional to the stiffness of my back and, well… everything else too. But it’s a good sore, like that earned by a difficult hike or climb: it notes that something worthwhile has been accomplished.

When I was in my early twenties I worked construction and carpentry for a few years and, in terms of job experiences, they are probably my favorite to look back on. As Seneca and countless others have noted; clean, hard labor may not always be the most pleasant task while you’re doing it, but it has very definite virtues. It’s a great workout, but that’s minor. Like climbing, its greater value lies in the combination of a tendency to show up our limitations and possibilities, and the satisfaction of seeing something worthwhile spring into existence before our eyes. There are few things more satisfying to me than to see something my hands have made, something that would not exist were it not for my efforts, at the meager price of some sweat and a bit of stiffness. There is something to be said for ending the day being able to look at what we’ve done, be able to see it and feel it and touch it, to know that we’ve stretched our limitations and maybe even pushed the line back a bit, and know that a good job has been done.

This quote doesn’t say that as well or specifically as some others, but I like that it refers to our minds as well. When I went fishing for a quote today, I was thinking about a) how stiff I was this morning and, almost completely unrelated to a), b) how the circumstances of our lives shape us. Specifically, I was thinking about the 6 years I spent in a bad marriage when I was young, during those construction years, and the motorcycle accident that ended my carpentry days and resulted in at least some of the reason for my current stiffness. I won’t go into details about either, at least not today, but what I found myself thinking for the billionth time was that I was thankful for both of those rather dark and equally life-threatening episodes of my life. I wouldn’t trade a day of them. Without the accident I would never have had to retrain, go back to school after squandering my opportunities out of high school, and wouldn’t be in a position to try to be a writer now. And without the marriage, I might never have been pressured by circumstance to individuate the way I did; to start looking for less comfortable truths and cultivate a healthy dissatisfaction with institutions and the status quo.

When things get difficult these days my first response now, as often as not anyway, is to ask myself what it is I’m supposed to be learning. I’m not suggesting that difficulties exist simply to teach us things – it’s more likely they exist because we did something dumb, forgot something, or made a bad choice – but if we have to experience them, we might as well learn something through them. (It’s harder, but just as valid, to ask the same question when things are wonderful and everything seems to be falling into place: Ease can make us intellectually and spiritually complacent.) Difficulties, however, tend to spawn questions like CNN spawns inane and redundant commentary.

I have to admit; I prefer the ease. But I don’t mind the difficulties so much these days. They remind me that I’m alive and still learning. More specifically, they remind me that I’m about to learn something new, or be reminded of something I should never have forgotten. Difficulties are an opportunity to become better, to ask questions about and of ourselves that probably need answering, to grow and become stronger, and maybe even a bit wiser, even if that wisdom has only to do with our selves. That’s good enough, a good enough reason to labor at hard but satisfying work, and a good enough reason to embrace the hard times in hope of the person they will help us become in the good times.

So, what are we going to learn today?

“Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.” Henri-Frédéric Amiel

I hit a wall over the holidays in regard to my writing output. It’s of little consequence, but the blog is a sideline for me, something to do to save my non-fiction muscles from complete atrophy and provide a vent for the angst I feel whenever I’m forced to pay attention to what’s happening out there. I obviously have some angst… 


Anyway, I hit a wall, and it affected me most profoundly in regards to the novel I’m scratching out. The blog is essentially fun, even though I’m often feeling grouchy when I pick a topic; the novel is what I’m pinning, have pinned, my future on. It’s kind of important. Paradoxically, while the novel is the part that takes the most effort to work on sometimes -it requires the most conscious choice - it is the one that provides the most happiness and satisfaction to me. This dynamic makes me wonder why it is sometimes that we, as humans, seem most inclined to choose (or not choose, and by not choosing make a choice) those things that make us least happy in the long run.

So, over the holidays; maybe it was the tryptophan, or the good company, or the weather and the shortest days of the year. You pick. They’d all be excuses, not reasons, so I don’t care what the actual machinery was. The bottom line is that I got lazy and abandoned what little discipline I manage to exert over my creative and intellectual life. And it’s time to get back to work.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not one of those that perform annual reviews upon my self, set a myriad of goals which I record in a book and track via spread sheets and data bases – I hope to live a less regimented life than that. Call it a prejudice if you like, but I find that kind of organization, even the thought of that kind of organization, personally demoralizing. I know it works for some people – okay, a lot of very productive and successful people – but I refuse to comply. I’m looking for a more romantic version of productivity, one that builds few roads and ignores fences, preferring to scramble over loose rock and run across open plains under a hunter’s moon. I refuse to give up on that ideal, but I have realized that it is still up to me to do the running. I must put one foot in front of the other and overcome my internal inertia all by myself.

But a little push once and a while is nice…

Three strange things happened in the last week to give me the required kick in the butt to overcome my lethargy, three separate and unsolicited confirmations that I’m on the right track, so to speak, and should keep on it and keep after it. And just when I needed it. I don’t know how exactly I feel about the interaction of choice and destiny, but anecdotally there seems, at times, to be evidence of some sort of grand scheme in the midst of our daily choices. I think that they dance together, cosmically, and try not to step on each others’ toes too much.

We don’t have a destiny beyond being the best version of ourselves that we can be, and that destiny is made up of ability, opportunity and the choices we make to take advantage of the former and create the latter. So I guess, if it’s a chicken and the egg kind of question, I’ll vote for choice first. There is no such thing as destiny without choice, or at least nothing I’m interested in. That would just be boring. I’m glad, though, that whatever destiny there is has the patience to wait for us to make the decisions we need to make, overcome whatever inner demons we need to vanquish, and realize that better version of ourselves while we’re fighting our way through it.

So, to those friends that provided the boost, thank you: The timing was impeccable. My little rest is done now and I’ll get back to really working; to taking advantage of the light.

“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Attribute this one to my stodgy and stubborn refusal to abandon some semblance of a belief in destiny. There; I said it. Now I’d better explain before my claims of rationality are all thrown back in my face.

When I say ‘destiny’, please understand that I don’t mean that we are all somehow fated to be superstars and have profound and world-altering affects on the global zeitgeist. I’m not saying that god is calling all of us to be the next great prophet. I’m not saying that we, each of us, have within us the predestined mandate, or even the opportunity, to be the ‘next great thing’.

I do, however, believe that each human being has a potential and a talent, and that this potential can be developed to what ever degree it can be made manifest by hard work, diligence and good fortune. That it is our opportunity and perhaps even responsibility to chase after it, figure out what it is, and ‘make the most of it’ in whatever time we are given.

I also hold with Emerson that without listening for that whisper, discerning what that whisper is trying to tell us, and then grabbing onto it tenaciously for the rest of our lives, we will never realize whatever potential we hold within us. This may require some sacrifice, maybe a little idealism, perhaps a re-evaluation of priorities, goals, the definition of what is needed to be whole and free in our world, and perhaps even how we define ‘friend’ and ‘family’. But, if we choose to own ourselves first and commit to becoming whatever it is we have within us to become, then it’s worth every drop of sweat we put into it.

I’ve known people who have found this whisper early in their lives, who were encouraged to find it and taught to guard it. Others I have known were drawn to it like a pigeon heading to its home, somehow grasping an intuitive urge to seek an unknown place inside them with a single-mindedness that was undeniable. They are exceptions and, by definition, have become exceptional. If you are one of these, you have my admiration and maybe a little bit of my jealousy, but mostly my admiration.

More often, we get sidetracked in life. The nurture required to encourage that kind of free-thinking truth-seeking, or the innate drive to find that one thing early in our years, is absent. Instead we are encouraged or bullied into seeking safer journeys, more comfortable goals, and often we never, ever get out of that mode. I fall into this category unequivocally except that (I hope) I have finally (better late than never) committed to breaking free of my mistakes and asides and foibles to find the true “me” and, hopefully, a measure of whatever potential I have within in me in close proximity to whatever that ‘true me’ turns out to be.

I’ve been close to this ‘path’ before, in my teens and in my late 20’s, but somehow got sidetracked both times. My bad, but I don’t have much time for self-recriminations these days. I’ve found that they, too, are self-defeating. So I try to learn from my mistakes and press on, listening for the whisper and setting the compass by that weak signal rather than get distracted again.

 Oh god, I can get easily distracted. If you’re a fan of the hilarious and subversive 90’s cartoon ‘The Tick’, you may remember the episode where Tick and Arthur go to Vegas. Within seconds, Tick spots a slot machine, mumbles something about “free money” and is completely hooked, abandoning the mission that brought them there faster than it takes for him to pull a slot token from out of his leotards somewhere. I feel like that sometimes, easily distracted by the idea of comfort rather than money, of the warm embrace of daydreams rather than the cold reality of actually doing what it is I mean to do. It’s one of the major foibles that I consistently have to battle against.

So, with my foibles (or at least some of the major ones) fully known to me, I’ve managed to find the whisper again and, in spite of the climb up to a place where I can hear it being more of a scrambling, two-steps-up, one-step-down kind of dance than not, I intend to stay committed to the whisper from here, ‘here’ being about ten months or so ago, on in. I don’t know what kind of excellence I have within me, but whatever it is, I’m not getting distracted this time. I’ll chase after it until the day I die, and it will be the chase that motivates me, not any kind of self-delusion regarding catching anything.

I’ll enjoy the road this time and try not to stray off of the path, and that’s enough for me.

This, to me, is the definition of success: to not give up, and to persevere in a worthwhile cause with no mind to necessarily complete anything, or to ‘win’ (whatever that means), but only to chase after it, to make the journey the goal and see where it leads.

AFTERWARD: A couple practical notes. One of the most important activities I use to stay on track is a little exercise I call looking in the mirror. You’ll have heard of it, I’m sure. I essentially try to take stock of all of my limitations and weaknesses, not so I can feel bad about myself, but rather so I know what to avoid doing, what parts of my behavior I need to address, recognize, change or avoid in order to be the true me.

I also need to constantly remind myself that it’s the journey, not the destination that matters. I have no delusions that I’ll ever reach enlightenment, but I’ll chase after whatever that is as best I can for as long as I can, and I’ll be happy knowing I’m chasing. I want to be that dog that chases cars, and who gives a fuck if I ever catch one; I’ll deal with that if it ever happens. In the mean time, I’m gonna love the chase…