Shattered Doors, Left Hand Turns and One Rogue Gust of Wind

Hmmm, how we can deal with the troublesome reality that much of our days are now spent living on the edge of calamity?

My apologies if that sounds pessimistic. I’m really not that kind of person by nature. But I’ve become increasingly aware that the margin between good fortune and misfortune is disconcertingly thin in this day and age.

It was an otherwise normal Monday morning that got me pondering this reality. I had shifted gears, reluctantly as always, into making-a-living mode.

I was in my car on the way out of my apartment building’s underground parking garage. I arrived at the exit to find that someone had destroyed the overhead sliding door. It was knocked completely off the frame leaving bits and pieces of the apparatus strewn over the floor.

Perhaps the perpetrator was inebriated or just plain mad at the world. It really didn’t matter. What struck me (if you’ll pardon the pun) was what might have happened to me if I had been on the other side of that door at that crucial moment.

More and more often I find myself at these potential-for-disaster moments.

Case in Point: Making a left hand turn on a city street. This simple manoeuvre has become tantamount to taking my life in my hands if there is a large vehicle in the opposite turning lane impeding my view. 90% of the cars coming in the other direction are driven by people either going much too fast, not paying attention, mad at the world or all of the above.

Heaven forbid I should wait until I have a better view. If I wait more than 30 seconds, car horns will start blasting behind me. I’ve even had idiots who squeal their tires, zip around me and make the turn in front of me. So I sometimes feel compelled to live on the edge and make the turn blindly. On a few frightening occasions, I’ve narrowly missed being t-boned by an oncoming car.

Case in point: Flip through the newspaper or watch the evening news. Chances are that at least one a week you’ll hear about a person – who snapped under pressure or fried their brain on drugs or alcohol – who committed a violent act that no one foresaw. All too often the victim is someone completely unknown to the perpetrator. They were simply in the right place at the wrong time.

Case in point: We are all just one bad quarter, or one ill-conceived decision by a C-suite executive who misread the trends, away from being out of a job. It doesn’t matter anymore how well you do your job or how dedicated you are. We’re all just numbers in the corporate equation. When the equation doesn’t balance, the axe falls indiscriminately.

In the language of metaphor, we’re all walking a tightrope across Niagara Falls one rogue gust of wind away from misfortune. So how do we cope? Live in the moment as much as we can. Plan for tomorrow when circumstances allow it but don’t steal from today to do it.

Today is all we can really be sure we have. So we’d better make today count.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Follow Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm regularly at this site. Categories: Shifting Winds, Sudden Light, Deep Dive, Songs of Nature, Random Acts of Metaphor. Originating at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 .

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