My main mode of exercise since my accident is walking, walking fast, and lifting weights. I work out with a personal trainer twice a week, and see an acupuncturist every other week and take the dog for a long walk on the treadmill or around the neighborhood or mall other times. I prefer the treadmill because I can see the results of my walking – I can control the speed and see my heart rate go up and I can choose to do a short very fast walk or a long slow walk or an uphill climb to mix things up. When I walk fast, I crank up the ipod and play my favorite rock music or some sultry jazz when I go slow. With all the busyness of the season I seem to be resisting working out. I noticed that lately and made myself do it anyway. And – I felt terrific- like I had just climbed a mountain and parachuted off. I thought –“Why was I so reluctant to work out when I know how good it feels after?” I think many of you can relate. We seem to be programmed to NOT do whatever it takes to get out of our cocoon. I think of this when I am coaching clients. I help them go to those places that they resist doing but know that are good for them.
“Most people don’t know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don’t get too comfortable and fall asleep and miss your life.” –Brian Andreas (artist and storyteller)
It’s the rainy season and as I am driving in the rain, I see many unmarked and unlit digital signs on the side of the road just like the one that severed my hip 4 years ago in a car accident. Even though Cal Trans admitted it should have kept the sign in a separate work area, it has done nothing to stop another freak accident happening like the one I had. According to the risk calculations the chances of another person getting hurt like me were slim to none so they like those odds and will keep the signs scattered about.
Many people think I should be scared to drive but actually I wasn’t driving when the accident occurred and my girlfriend who did lives in New York City without a car now.
Every doctor asks me how long ago the accident was and when I tell them, they make a comment like –“Well, I guess you will remember that for the rest of your life.” And I usually reply, “Well, I guess I will have to since you keep asking me the date of the accident instead of looking at my chart.” Not always considered a nice answer but one I am comfortable with.
Just in the last year I have come to grips with how many people didn’t think I was going to make it. I am a little put off by that ---probably because I never had any doubt in my mind that I would not recover. I wasn’t stupid about how long it would take or the seriousness of my injuries but I never felt in danger of my life—like in the movies where people are all bloody and contorting in pain.
Well, I have always been a little slow on the uptake. I get jokes usually a second or two after everyone else. And apparently I wasn’t in on the information that I could possibly die. I thought of those people that were really dying -like the guy next to me with the priest saying the last rites over his still body or the retired nurse who just had her last intravenous chemotherapy for her terminal cancer. I talked and joked with paramedics, nurses, and doctors even before they put me in sedation for the next 8 weeks.
The risk of infection and the risk of not healing properly were hidden risks that could have done me in pretty fast even though I didn’t realize it then and just realizing it now how lucky (?) I was.
I have also realized that the people alive are more in fear of death than the people who are dying. I don’t think it’s as awful an experience as the media and our own minds have let on to believe.
We assume that people who are injured have the qualities of pain, anger and depression because we all bought into that bull. Yet those are the same qualities that the healthy have, too. The reality is so different in ways that I cannot describe except for this- While at a fund-raising dinner years ago, I sat next to a woman who did hospice work. I told her how I admired what she did and how I didn’t think I had the guts to do such work. She reminded me that every person that she held to the end had a smile on their face.
""Each person is a story that the Soul of the World wants to tell to itself." "The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there."— Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)