Ok, so this post is a little on the sappy side, but I do have my sappy moments from time to time - it happens. Besides, I'm sure a little sappiness is more desirable to most of my readers than hearing about hocking up phlegm and blowing my nose into my hand during runs or my ruminations on whether or not Nuun gives me gas. Also, it's pretty long, but I guess it'll keep everyone busy for a while.
When I was writing my previous post on Happiness, an essay that I had read in a book popped into my head. It was somewhat relevant to what I was writing, and also to some moments I had experienced on my long run on Sunday.
- I came across a girl who had wrecked on her bike, she wasn't wearing a helmet, and had escaped with a scraped hand and some minor road rash. I know a few of us that can relate to that. She was sitting on the sidewalk talking to her boyfriend on her cellphone - he was coming to pick her up. I made sure she was ok and continued my run.
- There were at least 4 times when I put my foot down on some item in my path that could have resulted in a messed up ankle or me ending up on my ass, but I managed to keep my balance and keep on going. Is sweetgum ball surfing an extreme sport? If not, maybe it should be.
- Don't even get me started on the impaired driving abilities of people on their way to church. Let's just say that people on their way to work are much nicer to pedestrians than church goers.
- The traffic lights were all in my favor. Translation - I didn't have to stop at an intersection.
At any rate this essay, from what I could recall, was on near misses. I tracked it down, reread it, and thought "That might be nice to share at some point." Today I was talking on the phone with my sister, and she was relating to me that she and her husband had made an important financial decision in an incredibly timely moment, and so the essay came back to mind and I figured "What the heck, I don't have any thing else to write about at the moment." That's entirely untrue, but let's just pretend I don't have three or four unfinished posts in the works.
Anyway, the essay is from the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. I'm sure many of you recognize the title. I think my mom got me the book when I was in college, but I don't remember. It's full of essays about life and the human condition, and it has a tendency to be overly emotional and a bit over the top, but the author is funny and writes a lot about his own personal experiences so it's interesting and enjoyable. He grew up in Texas so maybe that's what draws me. I was going to summarize the essay or take an excerpt but then I decided that was too much work so here it is.
My Grandfather Sam called me up last Tuesday to ask if I'd take him to a football game. Grandfather likes small-town high school football – and even better, the eight-man ball played by crossroads teams. Grandfather is a fan of amateurs and small scale. Some people are concerned about how it is that good things happen to bad people, and there are those concerned about how bad things happen to good people. But my grandfather is interested in those times when miracles happen to ordinary people. Here again, he likes small scale.
When a nothing team full of nothing kids from a nothing town rises up with nothing to lose against some upmarket suburban outfit with new uniforms, and starts chucking hail-Mary bombs from their own goal line, and their scrawny freshman tight end catches three in a row to win the game – well, it does your heart good.
Murphy's Law does not always hold, says Grandfather Sam. Every once in a while the fundamental laws of the universe seem to be momentarily suspended, and not only does everything go right, nothing seems to be able to keep it from going right. It's not always something as dramatic as the long bomb or the slam-dunk that wins ball games.
Ever drop a glass in the sink when you're washing dishes and have it bounce nine times and not even chip? Ever come out after work to find your lights have been on all day and your battery's dead but you're parked on a hill and you let your old hoopy roll and it fires the first time you pop the clutch and off you roar with a high heart? Ever pull out that drawer in your desk that has a ten-year accumulation of junk in it – pull it out too far and too fast – and just as it's about to vomit its contents all over the room you get a knee under it and stagger back hopping on one foot and doing a balancing act like the Great Zucchini and you don't lose it? A near-miss at an intersection; the glass of knocked-over spilled milk that waltzes across the table but doesn't spill; the deposit that beat your rubber check to the bank because there was a holiday you forgot about; the lump in your breast that turned out to be benign; the heart attack that turned out to be gas; picking the right lane for once in a traffic jam; opening the door of your car with a coat hanger through the wing window on the first try. And on and on and on and on.
When small miracles occur for ordinary people, day by ordinary day. When not only did the worst not happen, but maybe nothing much happened at all, or some little piece fell neatly into place. The grace of what-might-have-been-but-wasn't, and it was good to get off scot-free for once. The ecstasy of what-could-never-happen-but-did, and it was grand to have beat the odds against for a change. Or the bliss of just what-was-for-a-day when nothing special took place – life just worked.
My grandfather says he blesses God each day when he takes himself off to bed having eaten and not having been eaten once again. “Now I lay me down to sleep. In the peace of amateurs, for whom so many blessings flow. I thank you, God, for what went right! Amen.”
No comments:
Post a Comment