Must there always be a vicious gust of wind that snatches the magic carpet beneath us and leaves us fumbling to sort out the scraps of our lives? The realities from illusions, the temporaries from the constants, the wants from the I-should-be-dead-before-this-gets-taken-from-me-s?
Last month I got bumped off one such ride, and as always, I hope the scars never quite heal. I want need to remember the fear –> the helplessness –> the numbness –> the resilience. Damn humans! We sure are a masochistic lot for stepping in the ring time after time with our hands tied only to welcome a solid punch on the kisser.
Of course, being an atheist does nothing to redirect the WTFness of it all. It also means there’s no accounting for answered prayers considering all the “good luck” we’ve had. Close shave. Plucked before the ugly jaws of death snapped shut. Aside from weightless cliches, I can only hope that statistically, the odds of a vicious gust whisking away a family’s magic carpet immediately after a similar incident is very low. Hope? Bah! There’s another weakness of our kind. Vicious gusts don’t understand conditional probability based on hope. The only way to be safe is to not fly at all. But then, if you can’t feel the wind against your face, how do you know you are alive?