As far as I know, the girl in question is a sober kid, but rigorous about snatching up any opportunity or experience she can. Or, as her dad described, 'getting as much off the table as possible before its someone else's turn.' I'm not trying to promote ellicit drug use (at least not on this blog), but I think it sounds like a decent way to go about things.
As some of you may remember, I was in what should have been a fatal car wreck ten years ago. Coming millimeters from severing my spinal cord really ruined any shot I had at a sensible career and the 'normal life package.' One would think that you don't need four months in a neck brace to realize that we are not guaranteed tomorrow, but it drove the point home for me. Since then, I haven't been able to leave things on the table, or say 'no', or stay put.
Yesterday, my EMT pager went off for a 'single car rollover' and the flashbacks were hard to get out of my head as I rushed to the scene of the accident. Five teenagers, one of them seriously hurt. The other four were already out of the vehicle, and on their smartphones, unimpressed. I was most shocked that none of these sub-adults knew their addresses, but secondly, how can a similar experience have such an dissimilar effect on people? I'd bet these kids won't even remember this accident next week, let alone in a decade.
I don't claim a superior amount of acuity. In fact, lately I have been disappointed with my lack thereof. Disappointment and pain make up a great parts of the human experience, but it is pathetically disappointing how incapable I am at dealing with pain and still seeing the bigger picture. But, as far as I can tell, that is the normal human condition, with few nirvanic exceptions. When we're in pain, physical or emotional, we immediately shrink our world back to our own tiny size.
Lately I've been sad, and I've been reading Strength in what Remains which is about the genocide in Burundi and Rwanda. Not exactly an 'upper'. Reading about dogs carrying severed human heads in their mouths is hardly enough to break me away from feeling sorry for myself. And it reiterates one of the protagonists points: when people are in pain or feel hopeless, they will do anything-- including genocide.
So, let me draw a self-centric parallel... not by killing anyone with a machete... but by admitting that I have let my world get too small. I have let my pain get between me and that proverbial line of coke. I have spent too many precious hours devoted to self-analysis and self-pity when there are places to go, and things to be done, and people to be loved.
Because whatever life we have been given, is to be lived, and love is to be given recklessly... especially when we are hurting. If we can do just this one thing: live a life abundant with compassion and forgiveness, regardless of our own situation, we are living perfectly. Any amount of pain makes that challenging, but so does paying taxes, and television, and distrust, and violence, and gossipy neighbors, and getting ripped off, and environmental tragedy, and bad drivers, and five dollar lattes, and stupid misunderstandings.
My life will only last a few minutes. I might crash into a tree tomorrow. And, I might not. I might have millions more experiences, and the personal test is this: what experiences do I choose to have, and what do I do with them? So line it up.
