Relative Something

Everything is relative. Occasionally our perceptions may actually be accurate. Lately, I have found myself thinking, not so much about things that rarely happen, but about how amazing it is that they don’t happen more often. Does that make any sense?

It may actually be that they do happen often and that we don’t perceive it that way. Don’t you hate it when you accidentally swallow wrong and end up choking on your own saliva? Mention something like that and there is an immediate response of recognition. Everybody does that. Not all the time, but enough that we all relate to it with distinct familiarity. (And how often does it happen in a quiet place with a lot of people around? Why is that?) It amazes me that swallowing wrong doesn’t happen more often. Think of how many times you swallow everyday. There are so many possibilities for calamity everyday, yet we glide through the majority of our days successfully avoiding them. Even the extreme situation of death is a possibility that remains a constant reality.

I feel like I should be trying to sell insurance at this point, but I’m attuned to our differing perceptions. Like how often things happen. For the most part, we avoid death everyday and so do all the people we know. But have you ever seen a day when there were no names listed in the obituary of your local newspaper? Then consider that it holds true for every newspaper in cities across the nation and likely over the world. That’s a lot of deaths. Everyday. All the more amazing how often our days go by unscathed. That’s the other way to look at that same thing. How often some things don’t happen. Think about how often you drive or ride in a car and are not involved in a collision. But for the grace of God go I.

On Friday, Cyndie and I came upon a backup of traffic and soon discovered flashing lights of emergency vehicles and it became apparent they had closed the road to all southbound traffic and we were forced to turn. I glanced to see a small bicycle and a shoe by some clothes on the road. Sobering. Several hours later we passed through the intersection from the other direction to find that southbound lane still closed and state officials now engaged in reconstructing the incident. All signs pointed toward a fatality. For whatever reason, we have yet to learn from local news sources, any news of what had happened.

For those involved, this was a major drama; a life shattering disaster. The rest of the world doesn’t know anything occurred. If someone well-known dies, the shared grief can get so intense it is palpable. If you just happened to drive a different route in town on Friday night, you would be oblivious that anything of significance had transpired. If we were to feel equal grief for every situation of death in the world we would be incapacitated, so maybe it is a defense mechanism that we don’t.

And maybe when there is occasion where we do feel the grief, part of the intensity is our conscience taking advantage of the opportunity to release the emotion that has been held in reserve for all the others having passed when we paid no heed. A way of achieving some universal balance.

In the mean time, consider the perspective of seeing how many things function the way they are designed and how often things actually go right. Notice how many times you swallow correctly today. It is impressive how many things go right every day.