Fate the Blindsider
The closest I ever came to dying was over two years ago. Like many teenage near-death experiences, this one was entirely unexpected and so quickly recovered from that it barely registered as a blip on my adolescent radar screen. And yet, looking back now, I can frame the event in my mind: an inch or two one way, a half second more slowly or quickly, and I would exist either in a vegetative state or as a memory of existence, whose tenure on earth would be marked in cold marble on a sunny hill near a church in Woodbury.
After you complete a set of bench presses, you “rack” a long bar on a steel support above you. This places the center of the bar directly above your forehead. One workout, I set the bar down carelessly, resting its left side on the bevelled edge of the rack, rather than securely on it. As I rocked myself into a sitting position, I felt a 185 pound bar graze the back of my head, crashing like a piledriver to the floor. Had I gotten up a moment later, the bar would have directly met my forehead as I rocked upright, and would have slammed by head back to the bench, concentrating its entire downward momentum on a single point on my skull.
This story is not interesting because I did not die. However, it got me thinking just how much I take my life for granted. True, humans are not built to take joy with each new day - we are built to assume, gloss over, take for granted … but these are traits worth overcoming.
I have decided to remind myself of life. Not as some heavy-handed philosophical exercise, but as a way to be Happy. That reminder will take a musical form: I will play more piano, record another album, love the gift of 15 years of playing that I have been given. Plan your own reminder, too - we’ll try this together.
Comments
John
I didn't have a 185 pound weight fall on my head, but I had a 10 pound digging bar land right on the back of my head. I became quite dizzy and tested my vital functions by driving my car. Then there was that time the semi hit me on the freeway. Or when I did a poor front flip onto the asphalt with my rollerblades… then there was that time….
Alexander Micek
So John, are you actually dead?
Also, isn't ironic that it's called Lifetime Fitness?
jordan
i have almost died many different times. it isnt pretty. BUT some good news is….i hear you may be recording a new album which means i am buying thirty copies at least. let me know how the project progresses, please.
Alexander Micek
I will let you know, and if it turns out poorly … hey you get drink coasters that look like CDs!