the smedley log - suburban scrawl

When everything’s made to be broken

Things have been strange.

It’s as if certain moments have been interpretive re-enactments of the car accident I had almost two months ago. Some of those moments strike in real time; others seem to unfold in slow motion. Most of them seem filled with more meaning than I’m able to grasp before they’ve passed. So I’m left trying to glean whatever I can from them in retrospect.

Some lessons leave me feeling let down. I’ve learned what it’s like to be the person who could actually turn away from someone who’d do anything to help. I’d been on the other side of that many times, and this turn of the tables makes me feel like I now understand things I never wanted to. And that’s just one of many.

Some of the moments have been inexplicably jarring – either because of their fog-inducing qualities or because of the clarity they’ve brought. And many of those moments of clarity have opened doors to more confusion. Which leaves me hoping they’ll lead to more conclusive moments at some point – and wondering how many more of my preconceived notions will be shattered along the way.

I think that’s the beauty of preconceived notions, I think. They are almost always shattered at some point as part of a learning process that is good for us.

It keeps us thinking.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had taken 95 instead of 76 that night. Would there have been no accident? Would everything be different?

Probably not, but I still wonder.

Anthony – I’ll agree that the shattering of preconceived notions can be among the healthiest occurrences, at least in the long run. It still requires of us the heavy lifting that goes with paradigm shifting (please believe that wasn’t supposed to rhyme).

Marisa – I am the king of wondering what might have been, ever since I found the capacity for abstract thought.

It seems that any little decision made differently could have altered everything. Maybe the question isn’t whether or not things could have been different, but rather if they should have been different. And I still have no idea what the answer is to that.

[…] about really could have benefited from my continued strength. (This is part of what I alluded to in an earlier post when I wrote about tables being […]