Life Space

I was minding my own business this afternoon, toodling down Rainier Ave. toward Trader Joe’s, listening to NPR discussions of the situation in the Middle East and feeling at once very sad about it all but also removed from the tragedy. Suddenly, about 10 yards ahead of me, in the other lane, a car came to a sudden stop, I heard a thump and saw something go flying. There was a big SUV in front of me so I was spared the details but the car had hit a pedestrian or a cyclist or maybe someone on a scooter. Everything came to a stop, about a dozen cell phones came out and we all sat there for a few minutes. Those of us not directly involved were able to exit Rainier and go on about our business, but we had to drive past the victim. I couldn’t see much (to be honest, I wasn’t looking that closely) but the person seemed to be very, very still. And while there were a lot of people standing nearby, no one was actually with the body…which tells me that there wasn’t anything anyone could do....

The convergence of these incidents has had me thinking all afternoon. Life is precious. And it can be taken very quickly. I am personally holding out for the quiet-passing-on-in my-sleep-when-I’m-412 mode of exiting the planet but it is a good, if unsettling thing, to be forced to contemplate the tenuous nature of human life. Which I was doing as I wandered the aisles of Trader Joe’s looking for aioli and figs and tomato paste. And I felt pretty darned lucky to be able to do so. Because I am, for now, here and it would be a shame not to be just a bit more mindful of that gift....

“With everything that is going on in the world right now,” I said, “would it really hurt people to extend just a smidge of courtesy?”

She replied, “Oh, there’s no courtesy anymore”. I felt inclined to agree with her but it made me sad because I’d just seen death and had been thinking about embracing life more fully and somehow courtesy seemed to factor into that. You know, I’m still here and you’re still here so while we are let’s park our cars properly so as not to inconvenience others.

[via Here's the Thing]