Accidents

I believe it was Napoleon who opined that there are no such things as accidents–they are just “fate renamed.” That makes no sense to me. The universe or fates or some other powers care about each one of us and our little lives? No. The dog trips you up and you fall onto the concrete porch and break your hip, as happened to a dear friend very recently. That, my friends, is an ACCIDENT. You’re trying to body surf in the ocean when an unexpected giant wave hits you exactly wrong and you jam your outstretched arms into a shelf of sand, pulling or tearing muscles around your collar bone that take over a year to thoroughly heal. Actually, I think my healing took over a year! No little troll or devil made that happen to me, it wasn’t fate. It was an ACCIDENT.

We have this tendency to ask why something happened. We want things to be rational–cause and effect. It’s almost heartbreaking to realize that there may be no why, no real cause, no reason, and it’s hard to admit that much of life can be arbitrary. And yet, as T-shirts proclaim, shit happens.

We can be as careful as a waiter with a tray of full champagne glasses, as cautious as a farmer carrying a skunk in a trap to a new destination, as thoughtful as that guru atop a mountain, but still those darned accidents will come along.