"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking (Kesey, 296)."
Humans, since creation, have been curious beings. Always looking for the means and the meaning of things. Temptations galore. It's the reason Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and it is why our paradise is lost. Still, we search for meaning in life every minute of every hour of every day. Trying to make our life purposeful to the world. We figure we must have been put here for a reason and thus have a reason for our lives. Hoping one day we can return to the once known "paradise on earth (Martel, 309) and we "shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear (Virgil,278)."
In our reading for today, we read an excerpt from The Life of Pi. It had a new fresh perspective that I am not very used to hearing. When talking about Hinduism in Chapter 17, Martel writes, "First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first. I owe to Hinduism the original landscape of my religious imagination, those towns and rivers, battlefields and forests, holy mountains and deep seas where gods, saints, villains, and ordinary people rub shoulders, and in doing so, define who and why we are (316)." In our endless search for meaning, we inevitably must run into one another to help each other out. It reminds me of how I felt when I got hit by a UPS truck in high school. For a second there I really thought that was it. My life was over. That night I wrote this about the experience, and as I cannot relate that closely to Hinduism, it reminded me of that sense of mystery and search for life.
I enter into the narrow tunnel of stillness a day after narrowly escaping the tunnel of death. This place where you can’t even blink or they can’t get a magnetic picture of the damages. The clicking of the machine sounds like “Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt” over and over again until the buzzing interrupts and vibrates my body. I lie motionless, my limbs locked into place looking up at the lights and the inside of the tunnel just two inches away from my face. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Sean, the MRI technician, reminds me that I am halfway done. Can’t stop now.
The scene keeps replaying over and over again in my head like a DVD stuck on repeat. I was just driving to run some errands. Just another day. Singing along to The Format with my friend.
My neck is stiff, so is my back, and I feel bruises obviously from the seat belt. And even though I know I couldn’t have done anything differently, and I don’t have regrets, I feel at fault. And I don’t want to feel sorry for myself, but I feel damaged. And I just want my life to get back on track, and to look outside to see my four-month-old car gleaming in the driveway. But that’s not reality.
A split second altered my outlook on life.
She looked over at me while we were driving down Tanglewood Blvd and screamed, “TRACY!”, and as I turned to my left, I saw a brown blur with glaring headlights before I felt the impact on my legs, arms, head, and body. My world was spinning; I couldn’t feel any pain because worrying about her was my only priority. I somehow managed to put the car into park and attempted to kick my door open, but that was not possible. The impact had jammed it, and my old way of seeing life jammed as well. I leapt into the back seat scraping my knees on tinted glass as I climbed out the other side of the car through the door that still worked. I let her out, then collapsed onto the grass, for the first time letting myself have a taste of the impact I had just experienced.
Everyone was asking me questions. I was crying and shaking and shrieking and questioning and lying face down on the grass. I was scared. I was unreachable, untouchable, but I needed help. I called my mom and frantically told her I had just gotten into a horrible accident, but my throat wouldn’t allow my mouth to speak the streets I was nearest to. I chokingly handed my phone to the witness for him to help me. My first step of dependency and trust of a total stranger. But there was no time, no choice. My brain had checked out from my body.
Once again my expression turned to stone as I returned to autopilot. I got off of the ground and took my phone back from the man and called 911. I saw the UPS lady crying while she was sitting on the grass on the other side of this person’s yard. I walked over to her and ask for her insurance papers. I had to take care of this situation. She took away my dependence. She stole the attention. This hysterical woman handed me her phone to talk to her boss. He tells me where the papers are. I got them. The UPS lady told me she has never been in a collision before, I told her I hadn’t either. She told me that she was sorry, that she didn’t see the stop sign, that she didn’t mean to. I told her that is why it is called an accident.
I wanted to be angry with her. I wanted to yell and scream and ask her why she couldn’t have been more careful. I was mad at fate, yet I was lucky. For the first time I walked to the driver’s side of the car to see the damage done. My stomach dropped, yet I remained composed. The driver’s door and back door on the driver’s side were damaged beyond repair, the back window had been shattered, rearview mirror lay on the opposite side of the street, glass splintered the sidewalk, I am lucky to be alive.
The movie ‘Crash’ (screenwriter Paul Haggis) ended with a line I will never forget: “It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”
If she was lonely, I wish she would have just said so.
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