Getting Hit by a Car Never Tasted So Good

"Only in faith can we find for life a meaning and a possibility." 
– Tolstoy in My Confession

Got hit by a car today.  

Though I guess technically I rammed into her car, but I wasn't at fault.  

Let me backtrack a little first.  I’ve prayed lately to find a local dogsitting job because I’ve officially discovered that two things that make me happier than almost anything in the world:  little kids and dogs.   This is mostly because both these creatures don’t fear vulnerability.  They live life each day with undaunted zeal.  They are untainted by society’s curse and they love unconditionally; you’d actually have to labor to earn their disapproval.  Also our maturity levels are exactly the same.

I digress.  Today I receive a lesson in flat-tire changing 101 from a friend who shows me how to remove the sinister, punctured tube from my bike tire and replace it with another.  This is the same sinister tube that had disqualified me from my last triathlon because it ruptured as I trudged up a hill. 

Don’t worry, the tube suffered too. 

I proceed to violently strangle, curse out, and stomp on the punctured tube, because my dad and I theorize that some inanimate objects have lives and spirits and seek only to infuriate us; they deserve to be punished.  I then toss the tire into a volcano and watch it burn (just mentally, unfortunately).  

So I mount Marge (my trusty bike) for the first time in months, and rather irrationally decide not to wear a helmet for the commute to class.  Poor decision.  

I’m riding merrily down the bike path, when all of the sudden a woman rolls all-too-eagerly through a two-way stop sign to cross an intersection directly in front of me.  She is full steam ahead, and there is no way to avoid collision. 

CLONK!

I go down epically and lie in shock as the woman frantically scurries over from her car, asking if I’m okay.  I assure her I'm fine, jump up once some of the temporary shock abates, and check both vehicles for damage (there was none – though I expected to see a gaping Meghan-shaped hole in her automobile). As I’m scrutinizing the SUV’s black exterior,  I notice two furry creatures in her backseat.  I excitedly tell Veronica (we’re buddies by now) that she can redeem herself from hitting me with her car if she lets me play with her dogs.  She stares at me, blinking, asking me if I’m sure I’m okay.  I reassure her and ask if she needs a dog-sitter.  Conveniently, she tells me that her beloved dog-sitter has just moved to Florida and they’ve been searching for a new one. 

– I’m your girl, I tell her.  

– This is fate, she concedes.

We depart with a hug, and she tells me she’ll call me soon to watch her dogs.  

God practically stared me in the face during this experience.  He set up this uncanny answer to my prayers and literally runs me into a neighbor who can set me up with some cash and some puppies.  It’s like he’s saying, c’mon – what more do you need to believe?  If I’m reading this too spiritually and just choosing to construe it in a positive light, I don’t care.  I want to believe there's something supernatural lurking behind this experience.  Sure, most people would be pretty pissed off if a chick almost killed them as she blissfully blew through a stop sign, but I’d like to cook up a different meaning for it:  we both learned powerful lessons today. She realized she needed to drive with more caution and awareness, and I realized that helmets must ALWAYS lay atop my head when two wheels roll beneath me.  In fact I might even start wearing one in the car.  

Experiences are what you make of them.  Our present selves always have the freedom to manipulate (for better or for worse) what our past selves have done. 

The movie Memento explores this idea: the main character represents not a single, unified self that endures unbroken over time, but rather as a series of different selves. 

In the film, Leonard (Guy Pearce) has a condition that prevents him from making new memories, thus his short term memory is similar to that of a fish.  Every time he "wakes up," he is forced to live only with his present self, which he struggles with throughout the film.  His meaning in life is not based on a goal that he has chosen for himself, but is rather derived from a purpose or goal that he has inherited, or that has been implanted in him, from a previous self.  

A present self can have experiences and form new memories that will change one's seemingly fixed memories of  long-gone past. Thus the meaning of the past and the grip that it has on a person can be altered by the decisions one makes within one's present experience.  

In other words, one is inescapably responsible not only for the decisions one makes as a "present self," but also – indirectly – for the meanings one inherits from "past selves." Thus, we must always "wake up" with a past that gives meaning to our life.  We always have the freedom to transform the meaning of the past – and transform the hold that it has on us – through the decisions we make in the present.  This idea of discovering optimism by developing interpretation strategies is explored further in "Defamiliarizing the Familiar" as well: http://invigoratetheordinary.blogspot.com/2011/02/defamiliarizing-familiar.html .

So in choosing to view these events in both a didactic and rather fortunate light, I come to realize that I can extrapolate plenty of positivity from any experience.  Because of the bike accident, I will forever rock my stylish biker helmet,  I will be more cautious while riding a bike, and I will dogsit some of the cutest puppies I've seen in a while (and make a fortune doing so – she pays big $$).  

The flavor of every experience can taste terrific; it all depends on how you cook it up.  Inventing your life (and that's exactly what we're doing – inventing our experiences) by using poor ingredients or by failing to nurture it, as you should with any good meal, will produce disastrous results.  But spice things up with a zesty chipper outlook, and you have yourself a masterpiece.  Life instantly becomes delicious. 

Nothing but a potential mild concussion and an upper thigh abrasion can keep me from feeling like this whole thing happened for a very good reason; and I'm sure I entertained at least one person with this tale.  

I do believe that getting hit by a car never has tasted quite so good.